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Design by Gorvon Cratc for a stage setting: 


“A Palace, a Slum and a Stairway” 1907. 


STAGE DECORATION 


BY SHELDON CHENEY 


TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-SIX 
ILLUSTRATIONS 


THE JOHN DAY COMPANY 
NEW YORK : MCMXXVIII 


7. 


COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY SHELDON CHENI 


im 


FIRST PUBLISHED, JANUARY, I 


7 


PRINTED IN THE U:! 
FOR THE JOHN DAY COMP. 
BY E. L. HILDRETH & CO., B! 


“ 


, 


ABOUT THE AUTHOR 


SHELDON CHENEY was born in Berkeley, California, in 
1886. After his graduation from the University of California in 
1908, he devoted himself for a time to writing magazine articles 
on the theatre and arts. In 1916 he founded the Theatre Arts 
Magazine, and was its editor for three years. From 1920 to 1926 
he was actively engaged in theatre production work with the Ac- 
tors’ Theatre and other producing organizations in New York. 
For the past year he has been traveling in Europe, studying for- 
eign theatre methods, and he is now continuing his research and 
investigations abroad. 

In addition to Stage Decoration, Mr. Cheney has written the 
following books: The New Movement in the Theatre (1916); 
The Art Theatre (1917); and A Primer of Modern Art (1923). 


Pts 


ay 


CONTENTS 
PREFACE 


PART I. STAGE DECORATION 
I. DEFINITION AND THEORY 
II. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 
III. NATURALISM 
IV. THE TASTEFUL REALISTIC SETTING 
V.STYLIZATION 
VI. PROGRESS IN MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 


VII. VISIONS OF A DIFFERENT THEATRE: CRAIG AND 
APPIA 


VIII. THE REACH TOWARD ABSTRACT MEANS 
IX. THE RECORD BY NATIONS 


X. SQUARING THE NEW STAGING WITH EXPRES- 
SIONISM 


XI. THE MODERN STAGES 

XII. THE ARCHITECTURAL STAGE 
XIII. THE SPACE STAGE | 
XIV. CONSTRUCTIVISM 


PART II. A PICTORIAL RECORD OF STAGE FORMS AND 
DECORATION FROM THE BEGINNINGS TO 1900 


PART III. ONE HUNDRED EXAMPLES OF MODERN 
STAGE DECORATION 


PART IV. INDEX 


X1X 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


With sources and acknowledgements. 


FRONTISPIECE. Design by Gordon Craig for a stage setting: “‘A Palace, a Slum 
and a Stairway.” 1907. From Towards a New Theatre, by courtesy of the artist. 


TEXT ILLUSTRATIONS 


De 
Bas 


A “wing” setting. From la Machinerie au théétre, by E. M. Laumann. 
Drawing by Ernst Stern of a box-set interior setting. From Reinhardt und 
seine Biihne, by Ernst Stern and Heinz Herald, by courtesy of the authors. 


. A painted scene with set pieces. From Peintre décorateur de théatre, by Gustave 


Coquiot. 


. Plan of the revolving stage at the Deutsches Theater, as set for The Merchant 


of Venice. 


. Plan of the revolving stage as set for Faust I. 
. Sketch by Ernst Stern of the revolving stage as set for the woodland scenes of 


A Midsummer Nights Dream. From Reinhardt und seine Biihne, by Ernst 
Stern and Heinz Herald, by courtesy of the authors. 


. Cross section of the Dresden Schauspielhaus. From Wollf’s dus Zehn Dresdner 


Schauspieljahren. 


. Long section of the Dresden Schauspielhaus. From Wollf’s Aus Zehn Dresdner 


Schauspieljahren. 


. Sketches by Sheldon K. Viele of a unit setting for The Cloister. From The 


Theatre of Tomorrow, by Kenneth Macgowan. By courtesy of the publishers, 
Boni & Liveright. 


HISTORICAL PLATES 


1a. Vase drawing of a popular Greek comedy. From Die baugeschichtliche Ent- 


wicklung des antiken Theaters, by E. R. Fiechter. 


tb. Photograph of a vase in the Scala Museum, Milano. 


Opposite plate 1: Conjectural sketch of an early Greek theatre. 


2a. Redrawing from a conjectural design by Prof. James Turney Allen of the 


Theatre of Dionysus stage building in the late fifth century B.c. By courtesy 
of Professor Allen. 


2b. Reconstruction of the stage building at Priene, by A. von Gerkan. From Das 


Theater von Priene, by A. von Gerkan. 


6a. 


6b. 


7a. 


7b. 


8a. 


8b. 


Io. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


Opposite plate 2: Conjectural sketch of the Theatre of Dionysus by Wilhelm 
Dorpfeld. From Das griechische Theater, by Doérpfeld and Reisch. 


. Two conjectural drawings of the Theatre of Dionysus in the fourth century 


B.c., by August Frickenhaus. From his Die altgriechische Biihne, by courtesy 
of Walter de Gruyter and Company, Berlin and Leipzig. 

Opposite plate 3: Sketch by E. R. Fiechter of the Greek Theatre at Oropus, 
from his Die baugeschichtliche Entwicklung des antiken Theaters. 


. Sketch by E. R. Fiechter of the Theatre at Ephesus. From his Die bauges- 


chichtliche Entwicklung des antiken Theaters. 
Opposite plate 4: Outline sketch by Fiechter of the theatre at Ephesus. 


. Drawing by A. von Gerkan of the Greek Theatre at Priene, and photograph 


of the existing ruins. From Das Theater von Priene, by A. von Gerkan. 
Opposite plate 5: Sketch of the Priene theatre from the rear. 

Reconstruction of the Roman Theatre at Orange, after a drawing made 
under the direction of Auguste Caristie. 

Reconstruction of the Roman Theatre at Orange. From Note sur les décors de 
théatre dans Pantiquité romaine, by Camille Saint-Saéns. 

Opposite plate 6: Relief of Roman actors. From a grave monument; repro- 
duced from Fiechter. 

Reconstruction of the Roman Theatre at Aspendus. After a drawing by Nie- 
mann in Lanckoronski’s Sta@dte Pamphiliens und Pisidiens. 

Ruins of the Aspendus theatre in the nineteenth century. From The Theatre 
of the Greeks, edited by J. W. Donaldson. 

Opposite plate 7: Sketch of the theatre at Termessus. After Niemann. From 
le Théatre Grec, by Octave Navarre. 

Reconstruction of Pompey’s Theatre in Rome. From Das Theater, by A. 
Streit. 

Reconstruction of a Roman stage wall. From a drawing by G. von Cube, in 
his Die romische “Scenae Frons” in den pompejanischen Wandbildern. By 
courtesy of the publisher, Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin. | 


. Photographs of the Olympic Theatre at Vicenza. 


Opposite plate 9: Drawing after a sketch-design for a stage, by Inigo Jones, 
as reproduced in the Burlington Magazine. 

The Farnese Theatre at Parma. After a drawing by J. M. Olbrich, in Das 
Theater, by A. Streit. 

Opposite plate 10: Sketch plans of type theatres from Greek to Renaissance. 


Il. 


I2. 


13. 


14. 


15. 
16a. 


16b. 


17. 


18. 


19. 


20. 


21a. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS X1 


(The sketch of the little-known theatre at Sabbioneta is made after Sca- 
mozzi’s plan as reproduced in The Mask, 1923.) 

A typical altar area, within a church, and a church porch. From an old print 
and a painting. 

Opposite plate 11: Sketch by Viollet-le-Duc of a ceremony in Notre Dame de 
Paris. 

Drawing of a mystery stage, after Fouquet. From Ja Litterature francaise, by 
Paul Albert. 

Opposite plate 12: Drawing of a Meistersinger stage, after a reconstruction 
by Albert Koster. 

Stage of the Valenciennes Passion Play, after a miniature by Cailleau. From 
Das Biihnenbild, by Carl Niessen. 

A wagon stage. From a plate in Coventry Mysteries, by Thomas Sharp. By 
courtesy of Theatre Arts Monthly. 

Opposite plate 14: Sketch of a wagon stage by Hermann Rosse. By courtesy 
of the artist. 

Illustrations of a Terence stage. From the 1493 Trechsel edition of Terence. 
The stage of Tabarin in Paris, after a print by Abraham Bosse. From les 
Rues du vieux Paris, by Victor Fournel. 

Etching by Jacques Callot of a Commedia dell? Arte stage. By courtesy of 
Theatre Arts Monthly. 

Opposite plate 16: Woodcut of a stage of the Hans Sachs period. 

Johann deWitt’s drawing of the Swan Theatre. 

Opposite plate 17: Title-page vignettes from Roxana and Messalina. 
Reconstruction of a Shakespearian stage by Victor E. Albright. From his T’he 
Shakespearian Stage. 

Opposite plate 18: Title-page vignette from Kirkman’s Wits. 
Reconstruction of the Fortune Theatre by Walter H. Godfrey. From Shake- 
speare’s Theatre, by Ashley H. Thorndike, by courtesy of the publishers, The 
Macmillan Company. 

Opposite plate 19: Reconstruction by G. P. Fauconnet. 

Engraving of an Amsterdam stage of 1638. From Das Biihnenbild, by Carl 
Niessen. 

Opposite plate 20: The Rederijker stages at Ghent and Antwerp. From The 
English Drama in the A ge of Shakespeare, by Wilhelm Creizenach. 

A multiple setting. From Das Biihnenbild, by Carl Niessen. 


X11 


21Ib. 


22. 


23a. 
23b. 


54; 


25a. 
25b. 


29. 


30. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


A multiple setting at the Hétel de Bourgogne. From le Mémoire de Mahelot, 
Laurent, et dautres décorateurs de Phétel de Bourgogne et de la Comédie- 
Francaise au XVIIe siécle, by Prof. Henry Carrington Lancaster. By court- 
esy of the author. 

The tragic and comic scenes as designed by Serlio. By courtesy of Theatre 
Arts Monthly. 

Opposite plate 22: Perspective street scene. From the Venetian 1586 Gryphon 
edition of ‘Terence. 

Setting of PErinto. From Geschichte der Munchner Oper, by Max Zenger. 
Scene from Furttenbach’s Architectura Civilis. By courtesy of Theatre Arts 
Monthly. 

Opposite plate 23: Setting for I] Granchio, 1566. From Scenes and Machines 
on the English Stage during the Renaissance, by Lily B. Campbell. By cour- 
tesy of the publishers, the Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 
Perspective scene at the Thédtre Royal, 1670. From a reproduction of the 
original painting in the Comédie-Francais Museum, Paris. 

Opposite plate 24: A setting by Servandoni. From ?Envers du théatre, by 
M. J. Moynet. 

Scene by Guiseppe Galli-Bibiena. From the original print. 

Drawing by Giovanni Maria Galli-Bibiena. From an Alinari photograph of 
the original in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. 

Opposite plate 25: A Bibiena setting. From P?Envers du thédtre, by M. J. 
Moynet. 7 


. Procession “floats.” From reéngravings of the prints by Jacques Callot. 
. Setting for Ballet de la Royne, 1581. From Arthur Pougin’s Dictionnaire his- 


torique et pittoresque du théatre. 


. An Italian court masque. After a print by Callot. From The Theatre of To- 


morrow, by Kenneth Macgowan. By courtesy of the publishers, Boni & 
Liveright. 

A representation at Versailles, 1664. From Pougin, Dictionnaire du théatre. 
Opposite plate 29: Scene from ?Hypocondriaque. From PAncienne France: 
le théatre et la musique. 

Stage machinery. From de P Execution dramatique, considérée dans ses rap- 
ports avec le matériel de la salle et de la scéne, by the Colonel Grobert. 
Opposite plate 30: Scene from les Noces de Thétis et Pélée. From PAncienne 
France: le théétre et la musique. 


31a. 


3b. 
22. 


33a. 


33b. 
34- 


35: 


RO. 


37a. 
ay N. 


38a. 


38b. 


392. 
39b. 


40a. 
40b. 


41. 


42. 


EVP OF ILLUSTRATIONS Xill 


Drawing for Floriméne, by Inigo Jones. By courtesy of Theatre Arts 
Monthly. 

Serlio’s satyric scene. By courtesy of Theatre Arts Monthly. 

Scene from Acis and Galatea, at Mme. de Pompadour’s theatre. From an 
etching by Guilmet after the gouache by Cochin. 

A production at the Variétés, Paris, 1789. From ? Ancienne France: le théatre 
et la musique. 

A production in the Salle Ventadour, 1843. From Pougin. 

A “wing” setting for The School for Scandal. From Shakespeare's Theatre, 
by Ashley H. Thorndike. By courtesy of the publishers, The Macmillan Com- 
pany. 

Opposite plate 34: An early “wing” setting, 1655. 

The Drottningholm Theatre stage with “wing” settings. By courtesy of John 
Mason Brown. 

Opposite plate 35: Illustration of wing construction. From la Machinerie au 
théatre, by E. M. Laumann. 

Scene for Kathchen von Heilbronn, by Carl Friedrich Schinkel. From Schin- 
kel’s Sammlung von Theater-Dekorationen. 

Opposite plate 36: Scene by Rubé and Chaperon. From ?Envers du thédtre, 
by M. J. Moynet. 

Scene from Tribut de Zamora, by J. B. Lavastre. From Pougin. 

Scene from J/ Pirata, as produced at Milano (probably at the Scala Theatre). 
From a print. 

Opposite plate 37: A fire “effect” as seen from auditorium and from back- 
stage. From PEnvers du théatre, by M. J. Moynet. 

Setting at the Italian Theatre in Paris. From Soubies’ le Thédatre-Italien de 
1800 @ 1913. 

Setting at the Italian Theatre in Paris. From a print. 

The Parsifal forest scene, in a production at Munich. From a photograph. 
Section through the Paris Opera House. From an old print by Karl Fichot 
and Henri Meyer, in the Guide to the Paris Opera. 

Scene from Manon Lescaut at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York. 
Scene from The Merchant of Venice at the Comédie-Frangaise. 

A setting for Wetterleuchten. From Wollf’s dus zehn Dresdner Schauspiel- 


jahren. 


Settings for The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters at the Moscow Art 


XIV 


43. 


LIST OF(\TLUUS TRA hs 


Theatre. From The Path of the Modern Russian Stage, by courtesy of the 
author, Alexander Bakshy, and of the publisher, Cecil Palmer, London. 
Setting for The Return of Peter Grimm as produced by David Belasco. 


PLATES OF MODERN STAGE DECORATION 


44. 
45. 


46. 


47 


48. 
49. 


50. 
Te 
52. 


53- 
54. 


55: 


56. 
57: 
58. 
59: 
60. 


61. 


Setting by Lee Simonson for Liliom. From a photograph by Francis Bru- 
guiere. 

Setting by Rollo Peters for Mme. Sand. From a photograph by Francis 
Bruguiere. 

Design by Emil Orlik for The Winter’s Tale. 

Opposite plate 46: Sketch by Ernst Stern for Swmurun. From Reinhardt 
und seine Biihne, by courtesy of the authors, Ernst Stern and Heinz Herald. 
Setting by Joseph Urban for Parsifal. 

Setting by Robert Edmond Jones for The Devil’s Garden. } 
Setting by Cleon Throckmorton for The Moon of the Caribbees. From a 
photograph by Francis Bruguiere. 

Setting for In the Claws of Life at the Moscow Art Theatre. By courtesy 
of Oliver M. Sayler. 
Settings by Woodman Thompson for Malvaloca. From photographs by 
Francis Bruguiere. 

Designs by Claude Bragdon for Hamlet. By courtesy of The Architectural 
Record. 

Settings by Boris Anisfeld for The Love for Three Oranges. 

Design by Robert Edmond Jones for The Man Who Married a Dumb 
Wife. 

Design by Fritz Erler for Faust. 

Opposite plate 55: Setting for Faust by Cambon. From ?Envers du thédatre, 
by M. J. Moynet. 

Design by Knut Strom and Rochus Gliese for Macbeth. 

Setting by Joseph Urban for The Love of the Three Kings. 

Setting by Raymond Jonson for Grotesques. By courtesy of Cloyd Head. 
Setting by James Reynolds for The Last Night of Don Juan. From a 
photograph by Francis Bruguiere. 

Setting by Norman Wilkinson for Twelfth Night. Copyright photograph 
by the Daily Mail Studios, London. 

Sketches by Ernst Stern of Reinhardt’s revolving stage. From Reinhardt und 
seine Biihne, by courtesy of the authors, Ernst Stern and Heinz Herald. 


62. 


63. 
64. 


65. 
66. 


67. 


68. 
69. 
70. 
rae 
ee 
13: 


74: 
75 


76. 
77: 


78. 
79: 


80. 


81. 


Biol OF [ILLUSTRATIONS XV 


Settings by Aline Bernstein for The Little Clay Cart and The Dybbuk. 
From photographs by Francis Bruguiere. 

Design by Leon Bakst for Sheherazade. 

Design by Leon Bakst. From ?Art decoratif de Léon Bakst, by Arséne 
Alexandre. 

Drawing by V. Egoroff of the Moscow Art Theatre production of The 
Blue Bird. From P Art theatral moderne, by Jacques Rouché. 

Drawing by V. Egoroff of the Moscow Art Theatre production of The 
Blue Bird. From PArt theatral moderne. 

Design by Gordon Craig for Hamlet. This and the next four plates are 
reproduced by courtesy of the artist from T'owards a New Theatre: Forty 
Designs for Stage Scenes with Critical Notes by the Inventor, Edward Gor- 
don Craig, published by J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., London, and E. P. Dut- 
ton & Company, New York. 

Design by Gordon Craig for Julius Cesar. 

Design by Gordon Craig for Macbeth. 

Design by Gordon Craig for Macbeth. 

Photograph of a model by Gordon Craig. 

Etching by Gordon Craig of a scene with screens. By courtesy of the artist. 
Two designs by Adolphe Appia for The Valkyrs. From Die Musik und die 
Inscenierung, by Adolphe Appia. 

Design by Adolphe Appia for The Valkyrs. 

Design by Adolphe Appia for Parsifal. From POeuvre @art vivant, by 
Adolphe Appia. 

Two scenes from Hamlet at Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater. 

Design by Robert Edmond Jones for Swords. From Drawings for the 
Theatre, by Robert Edmond Jones. By courtesy of the publishers, Theatre 
Arts, Inc. 

Setting by Maxwell Armfield for a dance-drama. 

Scene from the Chicago Little Theatre Passion Play. From a photograph 
by Eugene Hutchinson. 

Setting by Norman Wilkinson for 4 Midsummer Nights Dream. By 
courtesy of the artist. 

Design by Albert Rutherston for Cymbeline. From The Players Shake- 
speare, by courtesy of the artist and of the publishers, Ernest Benn, Ltd., 
London. Original drawing in the possession of Hugh Walpole, Esq. 


82. 


83. 
84. 
85. 
86. 
87. 
88. 


89. 


go. 
gia. 
gib. 


92. 
93: 


94. 
95. 


gba. 
96b. 


97° 


98. 


99- 


I0o. 


LIST OF ILLUSERATIONS 
Two settings by Lee Simonson for 4s You Like It. From photographs by 


Francis Bruguiere. 

Setting by Raymond Jonson for Medea. 

Setting by Lee Simonson for The Faithful. From a photograph by Francis 
Bruguiere. 

Two designs by Hermann Rosse for dance-dramas. 

A screen designed by John Wenger. 

Setting by Ljubo Babic for Twelfth Night. 

Setting by Sam Hume for The Tents of the Arabs. From a photograph by 
Frank Scott Clark. 

Design by Paul Nash for 4 Midsummer Nights Dream. From The 
Players Shakespeare, by courtesy of the artist, and of the publishers, Ernest 
Benn, Ltd., London. 

Design by Mordecai Gorelik for R. U. R. 

Setting by Robert R. Sharpe for The Makropoulos Secret. 

Design by Enrico Prampolini for a “plastic” scene. 

Scene from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. 

Design by Boris Anisfeld for Preludes. From The Boris Anisfeld Exhibi- 
tion, by courtesy of the author, Dr. Christian Brinton. 

Design by M. Doboujinski for le Regiment qui passe. By courtesy of Mor- 
ris Gest and of Nikita Balieff’s Chauve-Souris. 

Design by Natalia Gontcharova for le Cog @ or. From Gontcharova, Lario- 
now: ? Art decoratif theatral moderne. 

Design by Hermann Rosse for Mandragola. 

Design by Otto Reigbert for a “simultaneous” scene. 

Drawing by Louis Jouvet of the stage of the Théatre du Vieux Colombier. 
From the original drawing, by courtesy of the artist. 

Settings for The Brothers Karamazov and la Carrosse du Saint-Sacrement 
on the Vieux Colombier stage, from drawings by Robert Edmond Jones. 
From Continental Stagecraft, by courtesy of the authors, Kenneth Mac- 
gowan and Robert Edmond Jones, and of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace 
and Company. 

Opposite plate 98: Sketch of a model stage designed by Ladislas Medgyes. 
Stage of the Marais Theatre, Brussels. 

Opposite plate 99: Design by Alexander Bakshy for a formal stage. 
Drawings by Andrew Stephenson of the stage of the Maddermarket Thea- 
tre, Norwich. From the artist’s designs specially made for this work. 


IOI 


1024. 
102b. 


103 


104. 


105. 
106. 


107. 


108. 


109. 


IIO. 


Ill. 


I1I2. 


F123. 
II4. 
II5. 


116. 
117. 


118. 
II9Q. 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS XVil 


Model by Norman-Bel Geddes for The Mother of Christ. This and the 


following three plates are from photographs by Francis Bruguiere. 

Model by Norman-Bel Geddes for Jehanne d’Arc. 

Model by Norman-Bel Geddes for Lazarus Laughed. 

Opposite plate 102: Sketch of a model by Eduard Sturm for Manfred. 
Model by Norman-Bel Geddes for Dante. 

Designs by Donald Mitchell Oenslager for Das Rheingold and Gétter- 
dimmerung. From the original drawings, by courtesy of the artist. 

Model by Jo Mielziner for Faust. 

Setting by T. C. Pillartz for Oedipus. From Das modern Bihnenbild, by 
Oskar Fischel, by courtesy of the publisher, Ernst Wasmuth, Berlin. 

The stage of the Redoutensaal, Vienna. ‘This and plate 66 are from draw- 
ings by Robert Edmond Jones, made for Continental Stagecraft, by Ken- 
neth Macgowan and Robert Edmond Jones. By courtesy of the authors and 
of the publishers, Harcourt, Brace & Company. 

The tri-partite stage in the theatre of the Paris Exposition of Decorative 
Arts. By courtesy of the architects, A. & G. Perret and André Granet. 
Setting by Emil Pirchan for Othello. 

Design by Ludwig Zuckermandel for Cortolanus. From Das modern Biih- 
nenbild, by Oskar Fischel, by courtesy of the publisher, Ernst Wasmuth, 
Berlin. 

Setting by Adolphe Appia for The Tidings Brought to Mary. From The 
Theatre of Tomorrow, by Kenneth Macgowan. By courtesy of the pub- 
lishers, Boni & Liveright. 

Design by Adolphe Appia for Echo and Narcissus. From POeuvre dart 
vivant, by Adolphe Appia. 

Design by Adolphe Appia for Hamlet. 

Setting by Alexander ‘Tairoff for Phédre. 

Settings by Lee Simonson for The Failures. From photographs by Francis 
Bruguiere. 

Design by Robert Edmond Jones for Macbeth. 

Design by Robert Edmond Jones for The Seven Princesses. From The 
Theatre of Tomorrow, by Kenneth Macgowan, by courtesy of the pub- 
lishers, Boni & Liveright. 

Setting by L. Popova for le Cocu magnifique. 

Setting by Isaac Rabinowitz for Lysistrata. By courtesy of Morris Gest. 


1244. 
124b. 


Tae, 
126. 
127. 


BS aithes Studios. 
Setting by Louis Lozowick for Gas. 
. Setting by B. Aronson for The Tenth C ommandment. 


modern Bithnenbild, by Oskar Fischel, by courtesy of ae pl 
Wasmuth, Berlin. : 


Salzburg. sees by Ellinger Studios. 

Settings by Emil Pirchan for Wargus von Keith. 
Design by Robert Edmond Jones for The Buccaneer. ¢ 
Settings by Lee Simonson for The Goat Song. From ag 1 ss hye 
cis Bruguiere. : 


PREPACE 


Y object 1s to write (or arrange) a book about stage forms and 

stage settings which will afford the reader a bird’s-eye view 
of this element of theatre art throughout the ages, with a somewhat 
closer view of the revolutionary changes in thought upon the sub- 
ject, and nm practice, during the last thirty years. 

I am therefore setting out to treat stage decoration in two ways: 
first m avery brief résumé of its chronological development, from 
the beginnings of Western drama in Athens to the perfected nine- 
teenth-century picture-frame theatre, and then more thoroughly 
through twentieth-century accomplishment in the field of a simpli- 
fied realism, and forward to the most recent essays toward a space 
stage or a formal architectural stage; and mto this record I plan to 
wnbed an estumate of visual decorativeness as an mtegral and con- 
tributive part of theatre art. 

My defimtion of stage decoration 1s broad enough to mclude not 
only what we used to call “the scenery,” but the entire physical as- 
pect of the stage-half of the theatre building, with whatever may 
have been set up there by way of ornamentation or background, 1f 
any, and as lighted and peopled by actors—and I try to think always 
of this complete physical “stage form” m relation to an audience 
seated in the auditorwm half of the building. 

U> to this time no one has attempted to write a book on the sub- 
ject in so comprehensive away. In gathering the material I have be- 
come sensible that what 1s really needed 1s a three-volume work: the 
first volume to cover the justory of stage forms and settmg from the 
beginnings through the era of the painted perspective scene m the 
proscenium-frame theatre; the second volume to treat of contempo- 


XX PREFACE 


rary stage decoration as it is bemg practiced on nine-tenths of our 
“better” stages, in amodified realistic picture setting, tastefully sum- 
plified, plastically conceived, and prettily composed; and the third 
volume treating “modernism? on the stage, m the narrower sense, as 
a parallel to modernist painting, sculpture, architecture and religion, 
as a revolution agamst the realistic representation and the pictured 
setting, and mcluding the Expressionist experiments, the formal 
stages, the space stages and theatric “constructions.” 

As it is, I have modified my original plan for this smaller volume, 
which was to have been entitled “Modern Stage Decoration,” to 
make it include the short historical résumé as a part of the mtroduc- 
tory essay, and also a series of forty historical plates—because such 
background material has nowhere been made available. (I frankly 
include this summary as a merely tentative contribution to a subject 
surprisingly neglected by students and artists.) And at the other end 
of my show of contemporary general practice, I have added exam- 
bles of experiment along all the lines of radicalism; because I be- 
lieve that the 250-year reign of realism and pictorialism 1s about 
over, and that the key to the theatre of to-morrow 1s m the hands of 
the radicals. Thus my book, which would roughly approxunate vol- 
ume two if the threatened trilogy came into being, is now extended 
at both ends, to look backward and forward—and therefore goes 
forth to parade as a general work on stage decoration. 

In writing of decoration, by the way, I am not treating or leadmg 
up to anew art of the theatre in which background 1s glorified. To 
guard agaimst the zeal of those who scent m any attempt to empha- 
size scene a danger to the dramatic and acting values, let me say that 
I see decoration as a contributive craft, second to the play, to the ac- 
tor, to direction. Important as it is (and the ensemble or synthesis of 
stage arts 1s complete and corrupt without it), there 1s value mu ~ 


PREFACE XXx1 


only as the designer sees clearly the wnportance of these other ele- 
ments. But while I distrust isolation of any fragmentary art or craft, 
I feel that a serious study of stage decoration in relation to the whole 
art of the theatre can only broaden and aid the artist in whatever de- 
partment of the theatre he may be, actor, playwright or regisseur. 

I shall try to make the book as practical as possible, without any 
mtention of gomg into matters of construction and machinery, by in- 
cluding among the illustrations photographs rather than drawings, 
in those cases where adequate photographs are available. In some ex- 
amples, however, I have found the artist’s sketch a truer indication 
of the actual aspect achieved, and in a few others I have seen typi- 
cally theatric possibilities in a drawing and mclude it for illustration 
of a particular point. In the matter of photographs, I am specially 
grateful to Francis Brugutere, whose pictures of productions in New 
York I am using to the number of twenty. 

To the editors of ‘Theatre Arts Monthly I am extraordinarily m- 
debted, because nearly one-third of the illustrations in this book are 
bemg printed from plates owned by that publication. I may add that 
ten years ago when I was editor of 'Theatre Arts, the plan of the book 
first took shape, and the magazine then began publishing examples 
not only of the best current staging but of outstanding productions in 
the past history of the progressive movement, with an eye to the pos- 
sible collecting of the plates later. Edith J. R. Isaacs, under whose 
editorship and personal direction the magazine has so extended tts 
usefulness, has been not only a sympathetic advisor m this tardy 
gathering of the material but a friend and helper at a hundred diffi- 
cult turns. But for her, publication would have been longer delayed 
and the material far less complete. 

The book belongs creatively, of course, to those artists whose work 
is tllustrated, far more than to me, a critic and collector. To Gordon 


XXxil PREFACE 


Craig I owe exceptional gratitude. The American designers are in 
so many cases close personal friends that I cannot say yust where pro- 
fessional obligation leaves off and friendship begins—so I choose no 
individual ones, but record a general “Thank you!” for unvarying 
and cordial codperation. To the many artists nm Europe who have 
supplied photographs, I am likewise thankful, and to those several 
authors and publishers who have permitted reproduction of plates 
from their books, a courtesy noted with dividual acknowledgments 
in the list of plates and sources that precedes the picture section of 
the book. Louis Jouvet and Andrew Stephenson have made special 
drawings for the volume, a service for which the reader will jom me 
in bemsg grateful. I am mdebted to John Mason Brown and to Don- 
ald Oenslager for reading the text m proof, and for suggestions and 
corrections. 

SHELDON CHENEY 
October, 1927 
Scarborough, New York 


PART I | 
STAGE DECORATION _ 


f 


I 
DEFINITION AND THEORY 


TAGE decoration is, in simplest terms, the craft of creating an adequate 
and appropriate background for theatric action. 

This definition is worded broadly, to signify either the designing and 
placing in the theatre of special “settings,” their lighting and their codrdina- 
tion with the other visual elements of production, or the building of a formal 
stage to be used as the scene of the action through many productions without 
change or adornment. Such a definition takes into consideration the revolu- 
tion in thought upon the subject during the last thirty years, a comparatively 
brief period during which the change was greater than for 250 years previ- 
ous; for at any time during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries one 
would have been told without thought or hesitation that stage decoration 
was the art of painting scenery for the theatre. 

There are so many kinds of theatre, so many legitimate forms of theatric 
and dramatic presentation and representation, that a definition must be 
elastic and elemental if it is not to prove unduly exclusive. The one that 
stressed painting was right for its own era, which happened to be a long 
one, but it excluded most of what had been accomplished in stage setting 
in the Greek theatre, the Roman theatre, the mediaeval theatre and the 
Elizabethan theatre. The greatest two world flowerings of dramatic art 
occurred on stages where, so far as we can learn, the painted setting was 
almost unknown. The picture mode in stage decoration, indeed, has been 
extant only during one-tenth of the history of the theatre in time, and 
only during an era that has been comparatively lacking in those high 
qualities that characterized the plays of Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Sophocles 
and Euripides. 

But there are still other characteristics of decoration as practiced in the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that make the definitions then current 
inaccurate and unsafe for application to-day. Two standard statements were 
worded thus: “Stage decoration is the art of making striking stage pictures,” 


4 STAGE DECORATION 


and “The scene should be considered a splendor added to the representa- 
tion of a play.” Here is expressed or implied what we of the twentieth 
century consider a fundamental fault of staging in the painted-perspective 
era: the making of scenery was considered as a separate and independent 
rather than a contributive art, was seldom coérdinated with the arts of the 
playwright, the actor and the costumer, and was glorified at the expense of © 
the play and acting, with, in brief, “a splendor added.” We know now 
that any sort of splendor in the decoration—if it is not too dangerous for 
us to compass at all—must grow out of a vision of all the elements of 
production, codrdinated and integrated, else it will be destructive of true 
theatric emotion. | 

If one is seeking something else in the theatre than the theatre’s own 
essential gifts—seeking a picture, say—then one may grant the nineteenth- 
century definitions full validity. As a matter of fact, decoration was so 
pursued on its own account at one time, staging was so over-stressed, that 
the leading French playhouse, home of the Comédie Francaise and then of 
the Paris Opéra, lost its name of “theatre” entirely and was called the 
“Salle des Machines.” During this period the making of scenes and “ef- 
fects” resulted from a perfect marvel of ingenuity, and people came to 
the theatre to enjoy compelling pictures, clever transformations and eye- 
deceiving “stunts.” To the extent that these added attractions were successful, 
in that measure the true acted art of the theatre suffered eclipse. Even so 
recently as 1913 Van Dyke Browne wrote* that “the ancient Greeks and 
Romans were very fond of the drama and have left us some great plays 
. . . but they did not realize the value of scenery.” The self-satisfaction 
implied in that statement, its frank claim for the added values, grates on 
the ears as we read it to-day. 

There was a time when the twentieth-century revolutionaries went to the 
very opposite extreme, crying out for the suppression of decoration in any 
dynamic sense of the word. Even the term “decorator” came to be regarded 
with suspicion, if not hostility. During this pendulum swing away from 
display setting, the idea gained currency that the stage form and stage 
setting must never be considered as more than mere background. Maxime 


* Van Dyke Browne: Secrets of Scene Painting and Stage Effects. London. [1913.| 


Pirin CLON AND THEORY 5 


Dethomas once wrote that the décor should above all else be a good servant 
of the play. Georg Fuchs, with the anti-display thought in mind, added 
wisely that the best servants are those who speak the least. But Jacques 
Rouché summed up the matter, with a reservation, as follows: “Le décor 
est le bon serviteur du drame; il ne doit parler qwen cas de nécessité.” 

Adolphe Appia, one of the two outstanding prophets and pioneers of the 
new movement, went even farther, practically advocating the total abolish- 
ment of setting. He wrote that “everything inanimate” should be removed 
from the scene, that the actor after all was the only essential element in the 
mise-en-scéene, and that the object of stage setting should be to disembar- 
rass him of distracting surroundings. It is due very largely to this theory 
and to the stimulus of Appia’s writings that light, a living rather than an in- 
animate medium, has come to take so important a place in contemporary 
staging. 

But even if in exceptional cases an isolated pool of light can be achieved 
for the action—and this type of setting will find full treatment near the 
end of the present essay—it is possible only for limited numbers of actors 
and a very limited range of movement; and for the purposes of a working 
theory it is safe to assume that sooner or later something comes into view 
by way of permanent stage platform and walls, or drops or screens behind 
and around the action. 

This might indeed be the starting point for any treatise on stage decora- 
tion in its physical aspect: everything that exists has surroundings. Nothing 
can be revealed, nothing can appear or move before an audience, without 
background or surroundings. And one may well question whether there 
is such a thing as “mere” background in an absolute sense, an unnoticeable 
milieu. 

It is natural, moreover, to make surroundings pleasant, and who can 
draw a line of demarkation between that instinct and the urge to decorate? 
We may take it almost as axiomatic that, whether consciously designed for 
effect or not, the background will, by the nature, quality or appeal of its 
shape, color, material, evoke some particular sort of emotion. 

If the background, then, is not to be neutral only, not merely a “filler,” 
the next question is: how far should it go dynamically, constructively, to- 


6 STAGE DECORATION 


ward localizing the action, toward creating mood, toward reénforcing the 
emotion projected by the play and actors? Those artists who are only a 
shade more positive than the suppressionists, believe that for our over- 
localized contemporary drama it should, without being too literal, suggest 
the place or the nature of the place chosen by the dramatist. Beyond that 
there is the far more important requisite of creating atmosphere, of slyly 
putting the audience into the spirit of the action, of intensifying quietly 
the intended emotion. This intensification, this reénforcement, through the 
power of line, proportion and color, may be considered, if you wish, as a 
parallel to off-stage music, to an accompaniment of sound, in its emotional 
effectiveness. It helps to attune the audience to the proper mood for drama. 

The next shade of opinion is that decoration may properly become not 
only a reénforcement of the author’s intention but a completion of his 
thought, a truly creative and dynamic contribution. Without fearing that 
we are in danger of getting back to nineteenth-century separation of func- 
tions, or to over-development of settings, we may even accept Lee Simon- 
son’s definition of “scenic art, which is the creation of plastic forms and 
spaces that are an integral part of the acting of any play and project its 
meaning.”* Incidentally it was this same artist who had written eight years 
earlier that “the importance of scenery is the importance of a background.” 
The difference between these two definitions measures pretty accurately 
the advance in thought on the part of a large group of designers during 
the decade from 1915 to 1925. When they were in the first flush of revolt 
they had gone to the extreme of demanding just as little setting as possible— 
so that that became the period of curtains, screens and colorless walls; 
whereas now they have assumed again a more definitely creative duty, an 
interpretative function. It is an unusual theorist these days who does not 
grant the decorator a constructive part in heightening mood and intensifying 
emotion. 

It was Lee Simonson again who wrote that the business of the designer 
is “the search for forms which have interpretative significance and the de- 
vising, in relation to the shape of the modern theatres, of spaces that are 
dramatically expressive.” This implies a further step from mere back- 


* Theatre Arts Monthly, June, 1924. 


DEFINITION AND THEORY 7 


ground toward dynamic modernism, paralleling the tendency in painting, 
sculpture and architecture toward a greater reliance on that vague but 
enormously important thing called “form.” I have no intention here of 
plunging deep into the theories of modernist art. But it is well to point out 
that the progression from the romantic excursions and then the naturalistic 
studies of the nineteenth century, in the graphic arts, to a pretty Impres- 
sionism, then a simplified decorativeness, and finally into the several chan- 
nels of anti-realism and Expressionism, has a chronological parallel in 
staging. In the contemporary theatre the suppression of realism, the grasp- 
ing at abstraction, the return to an emphasis on the stage as stage (as 
against the realist’s careful disguise of the stage as such), the utilization 
of linear and spatial relationships rather than depicted background, intensifi- 
cation of emotion by every means belonging to the physical theatre even to the 
point of distortion of the outward aspects of life—all this is a narrowing 
in to Expressionism, to an intensified emotional expressiveness through the 
formal qualities of the theatre. 

Back in the days of the glorification of scene painting as a separate art, 
there was a theory that a stage setting must “hit the eye” the instant the 
curtain was raised, and its degree of success or failure was rated on whether 
it “got a hand” or not. Audiences became trained to watch for opportunities 
to approve thus audibly the work of the painter or to condemn by silence, 
whether the scene was the garden of Twelfth Night, or Valhalla or the 
famous cabbage patch of Mrs. Wiggs. The whole proceeding, of course, 
was destructive of dramatic unity, and was predicated on the idea that the 
“artist” might seek approbation on his own account rather than as a con- 
tributor to a successful total impression. It is necessary to keep clear the 
distinction between this sort of parading of the settings and the utilization 
of the physical aspect of the stage to strike the keynote to emotion. For the 
decorators, the very ones who protested the over-stressing of decoration, 
have returned to the idea that the setting has an immediate initial duty, 
not of “knocking ’em cold,” but of quietly letting the audience into the 
secret of the drama’s locale and mood, and perhaps reminding them that 
this is the theatre and not life. Robert Edmond Jones, long known as an 
artist who was most content when his settings fitted the production so per- 
fectly that they were not noticed, has given expression to a theory, strictly in 


8 STAGE DECORATION 


line with Expressionism, that the scene when the curtain rises should lead the 
spectator to say to himself, “It is evident that this play we are about to see 
is no common play. It is evident that these men and women who will appear 
before us are no common mummers. These are Actors, Seers, Sayers. Let us 
honor them. For by their inspiration they intimate immortality.”* Raymond 
Jonson had something of the same conception when he noted that “the art 
of stage decoration aims at setting the point of entrance into the new world.” 
André Bollf has given expression to the ingenious idea that the setting should 
be just assertive or dynamic enough so that it will place the play and notice- 
ably create atmosphere during the first few minutes of an act, and thereafter 
recede into the flow of the play to the extent of losing all appeal on its own 
account. 

The English term “stage decoration” is generally understood as covering 
far more than is implied in the French word décor, including costume de- 
sign, lighting and a general visual rhythm. The French mise-en-scéne, on 
the other hand, includes the whole design of the actors’ movements, every- 
thing that goes to the placing of the play on the stage. Indeed, de Fou- 
quitrest divided the art of the theatre into two parts, the dramatic art, 
including all that is properly the work or province of the poet, and the 
mise-en-scene, Which is the combined or common work of all those who to 
any extent collaborate in the representation. The emphasis on the complete 
work of placing the play in the scene suggests the breadth of the German 
term vegie, the province of that comparatively new figure, the master of 
the theatre, the regisseur. 

No student of the modern stage, I think, can understand the spirit of 
contemporary staging, can realize the sincerity of the designers in their 
willingness to make their contribution subserviently, until he understands 
with what energy, even passion, the recent revolutionaries have called for 
this regisseur, for an all-powerful, all-seeing master of staging, the artist- 
director supreme. He is the new, the typically twentieth-century artist in 
the theatre, and his function is the harmonizing of all the elements of 

* From the Foreword to Drawings for the Theatre, by Robert Edmond Jones. New 
York, 1925. 

+ André Boll: Du Décor de Théétre. Paris [1925]. 

~ L. Becq de Fouquiéres: ? Art de la Mise en Scéne. Paris, 1884. 


DEFINITION AND THEORY 9 


the complex work of production—not only harmonizing, but of imagining 
and assembling them. In Germany, too, there is the less broad word i- 
scemerung, but it is not borrowed into our language as these others occa- 
sionally are. We are likely to say that our “stage decorators” (itself an 
inexact term) design their settings in accordance with a “regisseur’s” vision 
of a “‘mise-en-scéne”’—a process no more international and mixed in wording 
than are the sources from which the designer has developed his new theory 
of staging. | 

While thus running through, by way of introduction, various definitions 
and interpretations of “stage decoration”—without, I hope, encroaching too 
far on the story of the actual changes in method during the last quarter- 
century, as that story will be told in later pages—I have purposely avoided 
going into the matter of changing definitions of the total art of the theatre, 
into the corresponding revolutionary shifting of theatrical theory as a 
whole. This much should be said, however: in the consideration of the 
theatre there was for a very great era an unfortunate incompleteness of 
vision, so that the writing of plays, the literary aspect of drama, was thought 
of as the sum of theatre art, and the whole subject was treated in learned 
circles as a department of literature; and again in a different time, the art 
of acting was taken to be the summation of stage art, “the age of great 
actors.” During those periods the art of stage decoration was being pursued 
in a separatist fashion. But the complete view of the theatre, the belief 
that the several contributive arts are all of a necessary importance, the feel- 
ing that a theatrical unity must underlie the play, the acting, the visual 
elements, the regie—these are ideas rediscovered during the last thirty 
years and now stressed as never before. If you will read through the im- 
portant theories of the theatre down the ages, you will find that there is 
seldom mention of this larger unity (although unity is stressed always as 
an element of playwriting), and little mention of coérdination except in 
acting. The conception of a synthetic art—not in the scientific sense in which 
we speak of synthetic gold, or synthetic food or synthetic gin, but as a 
perfectly fused, completely-seen group-art—is a thing of contemporary 
thought. Or if you prefer rhythm to synthesis, let us say that the moderns 
insist, as never before, that an all-pervading rhythm inform every element 
of the production on the stage. 


fe) STAGE DECORATION 


So any working definition of the art of the theatre to-day has to emphasize 
the presentation of a play by actors on a stage, through a flow of action, 
with that fusion of all the contributive stage arts which makes the drama live 
for its audience at its highest possible emotional intensity. Within this larger 
definition there should be special emphasis on aczzon as the essentially theatric 
core of the art; but either action in the sense of movement (as in early ritual 
drama and in the recently highly developed dance-dramas), or in the sense 
of the unfolding of a story or drama by actors using speech largely for 
expressiveness. 

If the artists of the last quarter-century have thus widened the definition 
of theatre art, and have changed profoundly both the theory and practice 
of stage decoration, they have also outgrown one of their own early miscon- 
ceptions. They now know better than to believe that reform in stage-craft 
alone will result in a new and typically modern art of the theatre. A decade 
ago, I think, many of us fancied that with decoration taking its place in a 
synthesized art of the theatre, a new and glorious form of stage production 
had been born. Having gained a further perspective on the situation, we 
now recognize that true new forms of theatre art are not hatched so easily, 
that a coérdinate revolution in playwriting and acting is necessary before a 
complete new art is likely to emerge. 

And yet, looking back, we know that an altogether extraordinary eain 
has been made. We know that the designers of settings have joined with 
the playwrights, the directors and some of the more enlightened actors in an 
attitude that accepts the whole effect from the stage as the important thing, 
not the play alone or the acting or the scenic values. We know that stage- 
craft during thirty years has made a steady march toward the typically 
theatrical, after centuries of practice in imitation of easel-painting and pho- 
tography. We know that current staging is at least simple, unpretentious, 
aiming to dress the drama, new or old, appropriately and harmoniously. 
We see the way cleared for the emergence of a typically modern theatre 
art, and we have seen thrusts toward it. And in all this gain, the men who 
have been concerned with stage decoration, the men who originally set out 
to change only the scene or the form of the theatre, have been leaders. They 
have destroyed both the physical and the theoretical barriers to a new art. 


II 
fee HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 


HE record of the changing stage, and of stage decoration in the 

larger sense, spans twenty-four centuries. There were probably im- 
portant developments of dramatic ritual, if not of drama and theatre, in 
the earlier periods of which mankind has scant or no knowledge. But for 
the Western world as known, the theatre was born in Athens. As Greek 
life disentangled itself from the veiling background, other arts emerged 
before this one of dramatic action. One of its roots, indeed, goes back to 
recited literature; but the main source of acted drama was in religious 
ritual. The new art sprang out of one element of the carnivals and festi- 
vals so beloved by the Mediterranean, vine-growing peoples, an element 
combining worship and pleasure, the Dionysian parades and dances. 

At first the “theatre” was probably no more than a cleared and marked- 
out dancing-circle (“orchestra,” from the Greek word meaning “‘to dance”’), 
with spectators standing around; then a hillside hollow with the dancing- 
circle at its foot. In the circle’s center was an altar to Dionysus, and a sacri- 
ficial table which a legend tells us became the first “stage”—perhaps only 
before the spectators found the vantage ground of the hillside. At any rate, 
as the one “actor” separated himself from the dancers, there was added 
a tent or hut, the “skene,” in which he could change costume, somewhere 
beyond the orchestra; and farther back in the area consecrated to Dionysus 
(if we are still considering Athens, where the first and most important an- 
cient theatre developed) was the temple which some authorities believe 
helped to give form to the ultimate stage-building. 

Here, then, even before there was any constructed building, were the 
three elements that were to characterize every theatre for centuries to fol- 
low: auditorium, orchestra and “skene.” These elements have persisted 
even to the theatres of to-day, but with this difference: the hut, as “scene,” 
ultimately drew into itself the entire acting space, whereas in Greek times 
the playing was all in the orchestra-circle. So important was the dancing- 


12 STAGE DECORATION 


circle as playing space, indeed, that when the auditorium took truly archi- 
tectural form it was in the shape of a U, a semi-circle with the. ends 
prolonged, because spectators were content if they looked down on the 
circle, as there was no stage which the seats must face. 

The first mentioned theatres had temporary wooden seats, like the present- 
day athletic-field bleachers. We may put up our first chronological signpost 
here, as roughly 500 B.c., because it is recorded that in 499 B.c. the wooden 
benches built for spectators collapsed, and that a “theatre” was therefore 
erected—which may have been the first stone theatre. What changes were 
made in the playing area at this time is unknown, and a controversy of 
prodigious proportions has raged among scholars for forty years past re- 
garding the form of the stage building during the ensuing fifth and fourth 
centuries B.c. It now seems established that there was no platform stage in 
this period, the widely published reconstructions with this feature being 
erroneously based on knowledge of the later Greek-Roman theatres. 

Certainly in the fourth-century theatre at Athens the full dancing-circle 
was backed by a scene-building considerably longer than the diameter of the 
circle, with two wings (paraskenia) projecting forward, as evidenced by 
foundations existing to-day. Authorities seem to be fast reaching agreement, 
too, that a construction more like a colonnade than a platform-stage, called 
a proskenion, was temporarily built between the projecting wings, the whole 
thus forming a one-story columned structure against the main two-story | 
scene-building behind. The drawing by Professor James Turney Allen, — 
which I am reproducing in plate 2, though frankly conjectural in part, is an 
essay at reconstructing the earlier fifth-century scene-building, of which no 
traces remain, on the evidence of the dramas and of certain deductions from 
relationship of existing orchestra foundations to the known fourth-century 
arrangement. The drawing approaches as close as we can arrive at this time 
to an approximation of the scene as it existed in the time of Aeschylus, 
Sophocles and Euripides: the audience looked down on a dancing-circle, 
and beyond to a fairly low, dignified, temple-like building. Other scholars 
have made radically differing conjectural drawings of both the fifth- and 
fourth-century theatres, and I am reproducing those made by August Frick- 
enhaus to illustrate his theory of the appearance of the Athens theatre in 


MHE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 13 


the Lycurgean period, both for their general suggestiveness and because 
they show the relationship of auditorium and playing area. 

As for stage decoration in the stricter sense, the reader should dismiss 
from his mind the conception of a picture setting for each play, or a spe- 
cially prepared architectural scene. The stage in this period, as in many 
others down to Shakespeare’s time, was a neutral place, frankly a theatre, 
and changes of scene were accomplished in the words of the poet.* Scholars 
of the nineteenth century, unable to think of setting in any other terms 
than realistic painted backgrounds, made many attempts to discover methods 
of changing painted settings on the Greek stage of the greatest period, and 
there are strange drawings of huge painted screens set incongruously on 
the architectural stage. But there is absolutely no contemporary evidence 
on the point, and no more argument than the supposition of minds trained 
to link painting and spectacle with the dramatic art that people as smart 
as the ancient Greeks must have utilized realistic or spectacular settings. 
The sole contemporary reference is that of Aristotle to the effect that Sopho- 
cles introduced “scenography” for the first time, a statement that may be 
interpreted as meaning anything from the introduction of a mere indica- 
tion of place to the presentation of a spectacular interlude. We know that 
certain machines and effects were invented early; and somewhere along the 
way a device for summarily indicating changes of setting was invented. The 
periacti, or revolving prisms, supposed to have been painted with different 
scenes in miniature on the three sides, were stood in the acting space, to be 
turned when desired as indications of change of locale. The descriptions of 
the mechanism are limited to Roman writers of several centuries later, so 
that it would be hazardous to attribute habitual use of the device or any- 
thing similar to the theatres of the Aeschylean-Sophoclean period. There 
is also later evidence, none too definite, of a movable platform or a revolving 
platform on a pivot, called the eccyclema, which some scholars believe was 


* I originally wrote, “in the words of the poet aud in the imagination of the spectator.” 
But the spectator does not imagine actual scenes: he has accepted the convention of the 
theatre—this is art, not life—and his literal mind is stilled. Subconsciously he is open to 
impressions of pleasing or unpleasing background, of fitting or incongruous surroundings, 
but he does not stop to picture mentally the missing “place.” 


14 STAGE DECORATION 


widely utilized on the Greek stage, particularly to reveal an interior scene 
(the generally accepted architectural proskenion being considered adequate 
for the predominating exterior scenes before palaces, temples and houses). 

For a brief view of the subject like this, however, it is sufficient to sum- 
marize the whole controversial matter by saying that in general the Greek 
theatre was a distinctly three-part affair—orchestra, auditorium, scene-build- 
ing—and that the scene-building provided in its pleasing and dignified 
architectural form practically all the “stage decoration” considered neces- 
sary by the dramatists and actors of the time. 

In later Greek times, as the scene-building developed, perhaps elsewhere 
than in Athens, it assumed the form of a high stage (probably the roof of 
the old proskenion) backed by a higher architectural structure. Thus in 
addition to the acting space in the orchestra there was a platform stage 
before a permanently decorative architectural wall. 

In Roman times the progression continued, until finally all action had 
been transferred to the platform stage, the old orchestra-circle being cut to 
a semi-circle and added to the audience space. The auditorium was pushed 
up against the stage so that it made one architectural unit with the scene- 
building. The whole affair became massive and ornamental. Where the 
stage-building of the Greeks had never been more than two stories high 
(one story above the level that became the later acting platform), the 
background of the Roman stage was ornamented with intricate architectural 
relief towering two and even three stories above the raised stage, with an 
ornamented stage roof above that. The stage floor in existing examples is 
from three to five feet above the orchestra. The heavily decorated wall — 
that now closed in the acting area on three sides, usually had three door- 
ways in the back and one in each of the projecting side walls. By a conven- 
tion, which probably had arisen in the transitional Greek-Roman period, 
the central doorway was understood by the audience to be that of a palace, 
and the others in the rear wall those of guest chambers; and in regard to 
the portals at the ends of the stage, a figure entering through that at the 
right was understood to be from the immediate neighborhood, while one 
entering at left was understood to be a traveler from a distance. 

As to the form of the Roman stage, there can be little controversy, since 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 15 


the ruins now existing, most notably at Orange, Pompeii and Aspendus, 
afford the basis for exact reconstruction. There is, too, little doubt that 
the stage wall, while almost too decorative in its own architectural way, 
served as a permanent, neutral background for most plays of serious im- 
port, probably with the suggestive aid of some such device as the revolving 
periactt. 

Aside from the regular drama, however, the Romans became lovers of 
spectacle, and developed a marvelous array of machinery for novel effects; 
and it may be that in the decadent days they made essays into the field of 
scene-painting as that art was to develop many centuries later. In view of 
the contemporary evidence of architectural stages and much machinery, and 
the significant absence of specific description of scene painting, one may feel 
fairly sure that Roman decoration and spectacle remained almost wholly in 
the sphere of the architect and the engineer. Horace threw scathing pro- 
tests at the populace for its love of the trivial and meretricious “show” 
elements in the theatre; but nowhere is there reference to any individual 
painted setting. 

Vitruvius, who gives in his work, Ten Books on Architecture, instruc- 
tions for designing Greek and Roman theatres, describes the presumably 
contemporary (Augustan) stage and periacti, as follows:* “The scaena it- 
self displays the following scheme. In the center are double doors deco- 
rated like those of a royal palace. At the right and left are the doors of 
the guest chambers. Beyond are spaces provided for decoration—places that 
the Greeks call weptaxrou because in these places are triangular pieces 
of machinery which revolve, each having three decorated faces. When the 
play is to be changed, or when gods enter to the accompaniment of sudden 
claps of thunder, these may be revolved and present a face differently deco- 
rated. Beyond these places are the projecting wings which afford entrances 
to the stage, one from the forum, the other from abroad. 

“There are three kinds of scenes, one called the tragic, another, the 
comic, and a third, the satyric. Their decorations are different and unlike 
each other in scheme. Tragic scenes are delineated with columns, pediments, 
statues, and other objects suited to kings; comic scenes exhibit private dwell- 


* Translation of Morris Hicky Morgan, published by the Harvard University Press, 


16 STAGE DECORATION 


ings, with balconies and views representing rows of windows, after the man-. 
ner of ordinary dwellings; satyric scenes are decorated with trees, caverns, 
mountains, and other rustic objects delineated in landscape style.” 

Efforts have been made to apply the second paragraph to the complete 
stage scene, arguing from it the existence of full painted settings; but the 
more reasonable opinion is that this constitutes a description of the “differ- 
ently decorated” three faces of the periacti. Of the machines for “effects” Vi- 
truvius wrote clearly, so that these can be attributed safely to his own time; 
and there is authoritative evidence that certain Roman theatres had front 
curtains which were raised from and lowered into a slot along the front of 
the stage. Again, in summary, only by conjecture or by torturing of the 
evidence can the stage of the Roman theatre be thought characterized by 
illusional scene, be considered as anything other than mainly neutral archi- 
tectural background. 

As the classical drama all but disappeared in the darkness that settled 
over Europe in the early Christian centuries, the buildings that housed it 
fell into decay; but doubtless acting and drama in more or less fly-by-night 
forms existed continuously until the next flowerings, in the churches and 
then as part of the general revival of art and learning that marked the 
Italian Renaissance. Avoiding futile speculation on the possible forms of 
stage decoration in the dark centuries, and putting aside for the moment 
the mediaeval religious drama, I wish to vault over to the theatres that were 
built in the revived classic tradition in sixteenth-century Italy, because they 
are the link between the Greek and Roman buildings and our stages of 
to-day. When the various independent cities and courts that then made up 
the present Italy were swept by the wave of revived interest in ancient cul- 
ture, academies were formed to study the arts of the Romans, and with 
many of these learned societies a prime object was the presentation of classic 
plays. It was for such a society, the Olympic Academy at Vicenza, founded 
in 1555, that the famous architect Palladio built the still existing theatre 
that is sometimes known as the Palladian Theatre and sometimes as the 
Olympic Theatre of Vicenza. As originally opened in 1584, it was in effect 
a small Roman theatre roofed over. The auditorium was made more shallow 
than the typical Roman half-circle, but the general plan and the permanent 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17 


stage decoration were as exact revivals as the architect’s knowledge of the 
ancient theatres, gained through Vitruvius’ works and through examination 
of ruins, would permit. The architectural ornamentation of the permanent 
stage wall, although characterized by typical Renaissance modifications, by 
a general lightening, is clearly copied from the ancient examples, and the 
five doorways are in the orthodox position. This link between the theatres 
of Rome and those of to-day is, indeed, more fitted by its design to be called 
the last of the ancient theatres than it is to be termed the first modern play- 
house. ; 

In an addition made after Palladio’s death, however, in 1585, is to be 
found the first imitational scenery known to have been used in a theatre 
existing to-day. In that year the architect Scamozzi built in behind the five 
doorways perspective “vistas,” relief constructions running back in diminish- 
ing size beyond each of the openings in the permanent stage wall. These 
were not added to increase the acting space, as the portals were not wid- 
ened, or in answer to any supposed need of the drama for illusive back- 
ground, but purely for ornament and novelty. They probably were inspired 
from mixed sources: from a misreading of Vitruvius,* from the vogue for 
perspectives which had swept the field of the graphic arts, and from the 
perspective scenes already being used in masques and non-classical dra- 
matic production at the courts. In spite of the fact that the Vicenza stage 
remained primarily a formal unchanging architectural background for 
drama, the effect of these “vistas” on stage decoration in other parts of 
Europe was enormous. 

Scamozzi in 1588 built a theatre at Sabbioneta, of which unfortunately 
the scene no longer exists, with a stage combining the playing space as at 
Vicenza with an additional ramped stage at the back, in a single diminishing 
wide perspective scene; and there are plans preserved at Oxford showing 
that the English architect Inigo Jones, after his trip to Italy in the heart 
of Shakespearean times, 1613-14, made designs for a theatre with a stage 
wall more than reminiscent of the Palladian Theatre, a wall which he 


* Daniello Barbaro, friend of Palladio, had published in 1556 an edition of Vitruvius in 
which he showed plans and drawings suggesting that the periacti with their painted scenes 
had been placed in the three doorways of the rear wall of the Roman stage. 


18 STAGE DECORATION 


pierced with a single large opening, with playing space behind in a per- 
spective scene. Thus one may say that in a sense our modern stage arrived 
by the gradual widening of the central portal of a revived Roman stage, 
that the proscenium frame is the enlarged palace doorway of the old per- 
manent stage wall, with the platform for acting pushed through and finally 
curtained. 

As yet the perspective vistas had remained neutral architectural accretions 
not related to the theory of placing a play realistically. They were imita- 
tional, but not representative of a chosen spot out of nature. But the next 
theatre joins the classic current with that which meantime had been de- 
veloping out of popular and court dramatic forms. The Farnese Theatre 
at Parma, usually termed the oldest “modern” playhouse, built in 1618 
or 1619, shows the final development of the Roman stage wall into deco- 
ration surrounding one large opening, a typical proscenium frame, with 
the stage gone behind a curtain and presumably demanding a new “setting” 
for every play. The stage itself and its backing are no longer the scene, 
the decoration. The auditorium at Parma is designed like half an amphi- 
theatre, and the orchestra floor is available as additional playing space; but 
the stage is the first of a new type none the less. The mixed form of the 
auditorium is indication of its derivation out of the court ballroom theatres, 
while the stage combines elements picked up from the double classic and 
festival currents. 

What went into this newly derived permanent proscenium frame—as sig- 
nificant a feature as any in the whole history of stage building—has to do 
with both the further development of the perspectives and with the story 
of painted-picture settings; but now, having established the progression 
architecturally from classic to modern stage form, I must go back and 
record certain more isolated but intrinsically important phases of stage 
decoration. Just here, however, I wish to mention that sunlight has now 
definitely gone out of production in the theatres of Europe. With the roofing 
over of the building, artificial lighting came in, permanently. 

If it was Christianity that jealously killed the drama as Roman civiliza- 
tion gave way to near-darkness, it was in the Christian churches that drama 
was reborn eight or ten centuries later and long before the lay revival of 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 19 


learning. In the mediaeval church the ritual became dramatized in part, 
and “Miracle” plays were acted as part of the service or as special festival 
occasions. We cannot know exactly how far the churches went in dressing 
the miracles with “scenery”; it would probably be a matter of rich cur- 
tains and simple platforms, if indeed the producers did not realize that 
the altar area without change is one of the most beautiful and theatrical 
stages in the world. And when a little later the plays were transferred to 
the steps and porch before the church, could any more fitting formal stage 
be devised than this one with its rich cathedral-portal background, with the 
architectural facade rising to be lost in spires far above? 

As the plays became more secular, as the Mysteries took the place of the 
more strictly orthodox Miracles, the theatre moved farther from the church. 
Temporary stages were erected for each new “cycle,” and these took many 
forms, from the simple wooden platform on trestles with curtains at the 
back, to the multiple “mansion” stage with its row of built “localities.” We 
have contemporary pictures of several examples, of which I am reproducing 
perhaps the most characteristic. In Fouquet’s miniature painting the two- 
storied stage, with its several canopied compartments on the second level, 
indicates little by way of decoration beyond that favorite, habitual and ornate 
feature, “Hell-mouth.” In Cailleau’s miniature of the Valenciennes Passion 
Play of 1547, there is the typical later arrangement of long platform stage 
with many architectural summaries of place. Almost invariably these stages 
seem to have been characterized by a row of constructions beginning at the 
right with something called Paradise and ending at the left with the realistic 
Hell-mouth that could be made to belch flames. Between were the temple, 
Herod’s house and similar localized places (as surviving even to-day on the 
Oberammergau Passion stage). The theory of the stage of the “simultane- 
ous scene” is that a large stage or playing space will in the minds of the 
audience identify itself with any one of a number of indicated scenes if the 
actor enters from or begins acting at the point where the indication is 
given. For example, in the playing of the Herod scenes the entire stage 
would be used after a start had been made at the station known as Herod’s 
house. There are records of a simultaneous-scene stage with twenty-four 
stations. Just how early the producers of Miracle and Mystery Plays be- 


20 STAGE DECORATION 


gan to introduce machinery for stage effects, and just when realistic building 
of the localities came in, cannot be determined; but here is a stage partly 
illusive, partly neutral architecture, and with curious intermingling of the- 
atrical convention and realistic portrayal. 

Special forms of the Mystery stage were those built on the three-decker 
system, as developed particularly in Germany, and the wagon stages utilized 
so extensively in England, where the guilds gave the plays in cycles, each 
guild presenting a scene from its own stage-car, wheeled in its turn into 
each of the many places where spectators gathered to see the performance. 
Of all the mediaeval religious “theatres,” however, the only one that even 
moderately affected the course of stage decoration was that of the simultane- 
ous scene. This system of staging was in effect upon the stage of the famous 
Hotel de Bourgogne in Paris during the early seventeenth century, as evi- 
denced in a very interesting book of sketches still existing. 

While absolute verification is lacking, there is sufficient evidence to 
warrant the belief that a special form of theatre developed, outside the 
Rome-Renaissance progression, for the plays of Terence and Plautus as 
acted at the schools in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Manuscripts 
of the early fifteenth century and editions of Terence printed between 1493 
and 1545 indicate the existence of a type stage formed of a projecting 
platform and a background of a series of arches curtained. It is a purely 
formal sort of stage, its decorative values arising out of the permanent 
design. It links neither with any well-known earlier stage nor with later 
developments. In the same way there are, so to speak, “fugitive” stages of 
simple sorts throughout this period when the drama is again finding its 
place in the world: the temporary erections used by strolling bands of 
players, the plain curtained stages of the Commedia dell’ Arte as depicted 
by Callot, the well-remembered platform of Tabarin in Paris, the floating 
theatres, the early German folk stages, the farce platforms. In all of these 
the curtained background is a usual “decorative” feature; and at times the 
curtains bore patterns or pictures—the latter indicated in at least one painting 
by Callot and in the little woodcut I am reproducing to illustrate a German 
stage of the Hans Sachs period. | 

The so-called “tennis court theatre” in France evolved for exactly the 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 21 


same reason that can be assigned for the Elizabethan English theatre on 
the combined plan of the inn-yard and the bear-pit: the drama simply was 
seeking a typical “place for seeing,” and a game-court was just that. The 
form of the place, however, contributed more to the making of the theatre 
auditorium than it did to determining stage form or decoration. 

In the case of the Elizabethan theatre, however, the stage is of a unique 
sort that demands attention not only on its own account but as model for 
certain “modernist” stages now that there is a revolt against the eighteenth- 
nineteenth century picture setting. In England when the guilds no longer 
commonly gave the Mystery plays, the drama passed into the hands of 
strolling professional players, who were accustomed to set up a platform- 
stage in an inn-yard. The surrounding balconies served “the quality” for 
seats, while the “groundlings” stood below, all facing a platform at one 
end of the court. From this arrangement and from the bear-pit, a small 
arena for animal-baiting exhibitions and cock-fights, the form of Shake- 
speare’s theatre evolved. It was in effect a high round doughnut sort of 
building, with the interior formed of tier upon tier of covered boxes on 
three sides and encroaching toward the fourth, with the pit open to the 
sky, and an architectural stage to complete the circle. A Dutch scholar trav- 
eled in England in 1596 and has left us the only contemporary drawing 
of the Elizabethan theatre. But from that and existing records of the time, 
it has been possible for later scholars to reconstruct the building with rea- 
sonable approach to exactness. A raised stage jutting forward into the pit 
from the doughnut wall, with two free columns half-way back to hold up 
a roof over part of the acting space; behind the platform a portion of the 
doughnut itself arranged with a permanent balcony above and a curtained 
recess below, for occasional use in discovery and transformation scenes; 
permanent doorways: this is, indeed, a most usable, variable and pleasing 
stage, with all the virtues of one architectural scene standing for all scenes, 
without curtain or facilities for spectacle or realism. Again the stage is the 
decoration. There is no evidence, indeed, that “scenery” was introduced to 
this sort of theatre even when the Italian style was being imported for court 
productions. When Italian settings came in, a new type of theatre came with 


22 STAGE DECORATION 


them—and Shakespeare’s playhouse disappeared with remarkable complete- 
ness. 

In the low countries there was something vaguely related to these Eng- 
lish theatres in certain playhouses of the sixteenth century, like the Rederij- 
ker Stage at Ghent (1539) and the Rederijker Stage at Antwerp (1561); 
and in the following century there is a real likeness in the Amsterdam 
theatre shown by Nicholas van Kempen in his series of views dated 1638. 
I am reproducing the engraving of this curious stage, truly architectural 
but with perspective bits and an array of “localities” reminiscent of the 
Mystery stages. It too, however, ultimately gave way before the novel 
picture stage with the proscenium frame from Italy. 

Returning now to that first “modern” stage in the theatre at Parma, let 
us inquire just what were the settings that were to go inside the frame, 
hereafter to be designed and constructed afresh for each new play, even for 
every act of every play. The sources were certainly many; but there are 
two chief types of scene, and two corresponding chief impulses. On the 
one hand Italian artists had developed that already-mentioned passion for 
the re-discovered art of perspective, not only as it applied scientifically to 
painting but in such applications as the decoration of walls to increase ap- 
parently the size of a room; and this new plaything, fitting in so perfectly 
with interpretations of Vitruvius’ paragraphs on the theatrical “scene,” led 
to the clever development of perspective stage vistas. On the other hand 
the carnivals, pageantry and festival productions at the courts had al- 
ready brought the engineer and the architect into service for the creation 
of spectacular “effects”—-sometimes only vaguely for dramatic ends, other 
times for even luxuriant settings; and the engineer and architect began to 
call in more and more frequently the painter, who, from designing at 
first perhaps only the small backcloth that closed an architectural vista, 
gradually took over the whole stage. For a time, however, the two sorts 
developed side by side: imitational architectural perspective and painter’s 
depicted scene. Since the painter does become sole master later, and there- 
fore monopolizes practically all the rest of my story, I shall follow out the 
minor perspective development first. (Since we are crowding out all other 
types and sources for these two, I may mention just here that the popular 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 23 


Commedia dell’ Arte players brought along at least an influence, toward 
the “street” setting, when they came indoors, and that there is some rela- 
tionship of pageantry to the broader show elements of the religious plays.) 

The “perspective stage” was developed first on the authority and basis 
of Vitruvius’ description of all scenography as divided into a comic scene 
and a tragic scene, both architectural, and a landscape satyric scene. The 
second volume of Sebastiano Serlio’s famous Architettura, dealing with 
perspective, appeared in 1545. Therein Serlio pictured the three scenes as 
he understood them from Vitruvius, doubtless modified by essays in actual 
application of the principles to current staging; not as “decorations” for 
periactt, but each a full stage construction. His two type perspective scenes 
are reproduced in plate 22, and I need say no more about them here than 
that they had great influence on practice thereafter over most of Europe. 
There were soon translations of Serlio in all the chief languages, and at 
least one writer, Fuerttenbach, in Germany, published very interesting free 
adaptations of Serlio’s stages. 

The non-academic productions of the time were being staged almost 
altogether in the halls of palaces, and a stage and its scene would be built 
for a single production or a cycle. The many individual perspectives thus 
constructed went through many modifications and arrived at many variations. 
Certain contemporary or nearly contemporary prints, however, and written 
descriptions, indicate that the general characteristic of the form, a stage 
shaped as a diminishing street between two rows of buildings, persisted in 
both temporary hall-theatres and the later proscenium-frame houses. The 
scenes, in the true type, were built of canvas on wooden frames, in exact imi- 
tation (not portrayal) of architecture, with the relief all built out, but with 
the measurements lessened as the buildings receded. The backcloth closing 
the vista might be in painted perspective, as distinguished from the duilz per- 
spective of the rest of the scene. 

The placing of all drama in three scenes, instead of presenting all types 
on one formal architectural stage, was, of course, a step toward verisimili- 
tude; but again it should be emphasized that these scenes were being 
developed as an attraction added to the representation of the play rather 
than to provide the illusion of a definite place named by a dramatist. There 


24 STAGE DECORATION 


was as yet no conviction that a “real” scene would help to make the 
drama live. We are unmistakably traveling toward realistic scene-making, 
but have not arrived. | 

The perspective scene progressed, then, from wide use as “type” back- 
ground, and from “set” use in a stage like that at Vicenza, to individu- 
alized use for single play and single act. The comic scene was widely 
utilized for the Commedia dell’ Arte, for productions of Plautus and Ter- 
ence, and then for comedies written specially for the festal occasions. In 
the latter case we know that the street was sometimes localized. Finally, 
of course, the current of architectural perspective setting merged almost 
indistinguishably with the parallel current on which the painters were rid- 
ing. Before turning to that other current, I want to violate chronology again 
by jumping forward to consideration of the final glorification of the purely 
architectural scene, in the work of the famous Bibienas and their fol- 
lowers. 

Here the setting became such a maze of columns, corridors, vistas and pro- 
fuse ornament that the poor old drama had hard going to get itself seen 
and heard at all. The imitation architecture that had come in as an added 
attraction and novelty in the Vicenza theatre, that had formed pleasing stage 
backgrounds after the manner of Serlio, now all but crowded everything 
else out of the theatre. Designed presumably as a grand background for 
acting, these settings smothered the players in immensity and garishness. 
Sometimes they were architecturally very fine in the artificial manner; again 
they were so over-involved that anyone would mark them as downright vain 
display. Giovanni Maria Galli-Bibiena, the first of the line, discovered that 
by abandoning the single vista and the straight view, by running corridors 
or streets off at divergent angles, he could attain new variety, complexity and 
richness. What he and his sons and followers did was all that was necessary 
to destroy that last vestige of the feeling of serenity, enclosure and intimacy 
that had belonged to the old truly architectural stage, and that had to 
some degree characterized the earlier imitational architectural settings. Of 
course such “show” scenes were bound to be imitated by decorators through- 
out Europe; and even so recently as a decade ago a horribly involved sec- 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 25 


ond-rate version of a Bibiena “creation” was in use (or I might better say, 
on display) at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. 

If the painter trailed the architect in invading the field of theatre pro- 
duction, he made a fuller conquest when his turn came. In the end, even 
the Bibienas had nothing on him in the matter of gorgeous display. The 
first really painty elements in production can be traced back to certain char- 
acteristics of the masques and pageantry that had been carried into the lavish 
festival productions at the courts. One might go even farther back to the 
pageant cars and ornamented “floats” constructed for the processionals held 
to celebrate royal weddings, coronations, “entries,” etc., and to the deco- 
rated stations along the procession routes. For these occasions the most elabo- 
rate tableau backgrounds were devised: such favorite subjects as grottoes, 
huge shells, dragons and bits of forest were repeated in every imaginable 
form. The first records of such elements in indoor production date from 
late in the fifteenth century; but it is said that by the early years of the 
sixteenth century every court in Italy either had a permanent hall-theatre or 
a ballroom that could on occasion be converted into curtained platform stage, 
dancing floor and auditorium. 

The usual arrangement for this mixed transitional type of drama and 
theatre is indicated in Callot’s etching of a masque as given at the Court 
of the Medici in Florence (plate 28), with a stage and spectacular scene 
at one end of the room, stairways or ramps leading down to the hall floor 
where the dances were performed, and spectators ranged in horseshoe shape 
around the dancing space. The engraving of the Ballet de la Royne (1581) 
is perhaps a more illuminating link between pageant or processional and 
theatre, because the stage here has not progressed so close to the proscenium- 
frame type, and the individual pageant constructions are to be seen on the 
dance floor. The famous court masques in England a little later were, of 
course, modeled on these Continental examples; and they reached the same 
lavishness and a like degree of spectacular display—which was all very fine 
in its own field, but should not perhaps have been allowed to swamp the 
typically dramatic play.* 

* Ben Jonson, piqued because he was paid for his masque texts no more than Inigo Jones 
received for their staging, wrote a satire in which this line occurred: “Painting and carpentry 


are the soul of masque.” 


26 STAGE DECORATION 


It is only too easy to see how the display elements, with their pleasing 
novelty, cleverness and prettiness, after once being brought to the stages 
for masques and festivals, gradually made their bid for consideration as 
backgrounds for the more regular drama. It seems to me clear that it was 
the spectacular appeal that first landed the painter’s setting on the play 
stage, not any theory of mounting the drama in a semblance of a real 
place. Then somewhere along the way a producer doubtless said: “What 
fools we’ve been! Every poet says his action occurs in a certain described 
place. Why haven’t we known enough to show it actually in that place?” 
And straightway the representation of a localized spot out of nature began 
to be shown—and the illusional picture setting was really born. From be- 
ing presented on a neutral formal stage, often decorated but not localized, 
the drama was transported into a series of picture scenes. Nor has it ever 
escaped from the picture stage in the three centuries or so since. And the 
picture-frame theatre at Parma became the prototype of the later stages 
throughout Europe. 

For convenience of discussion I have treated this development of painter’s 
setting as along lines separate from the previously discussed “perspective” 
current; but in fact perspective work was woven into even the most painty 
creations. It survived as architectural modeled vistas for a time, but the 
greater ease of merely painting the whole picture militated against continued 
extensive use of built elements; and in the end it was painted perspective 
that characterized spectacular staging through most of the years following, 
and it was the obvious inappropriateness of painted perspective on the three- 
dimensional stage that provoked the ultimate twentieth-century revolt 
against the picture scene. 

But in these early times there was no separating in practice the work of 
the painter from that of the architect and the engineer. Some of the earliest 
settings in Italy of which we have knowledge evidently combined the work — 
of all three. Well-informed stage decorators of to-day will tell you that 
their present complicated stage machinery can accomplish little in the way 
of “effects” (except in lighting) that the Renaissance artists could not achieve 
with their paint and canvas and their machines developed on Roman models. 

How immediately the spectacular picture setting and its “effects” came 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND oF 


into wide popular favor is indicated in many documents of the times; and 
the believer in drama on its own account may have more than a just suspi- 
cion that scene-making began right there to be pursued on the general 
principle of putting in a lot of things to please the children. Vasari in his 
Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, a work of the 
seventeenth century, wrote: “Baldassare [Peruzzi] made two such scenes, 
which were marvelous, and opened the way to those who have since made 
them in our own day. Nor is it possible to imagine how he found room, in 
a space so limited, for so many streets, so many palaces, and so many 
bizarre temples, loggie, and various kinds of cornices, all so well executed 
that it seemed that they were not counterfeited, but absolutely real, and 
that the piazza was not a little thing, and merely painted, but real and very 
large. He designed, also, the chandeliers and the lights within which illu- 
mined the scene, and all the other things that were necessary, with much 
judgment, although, as has been related, the drama had fallen almost com- 
pletely out of fashion.”* The same note of wonder is evident in much of 
the writing of the period, and the same appreciation of the spectacular values 
even when the play as such attracted little attention. Vasari’s last line brings 
up a truth that has been much bandied about in our day, notably that the 
time for spectacular display in settings is when the drama itself is weak. 

In making use of the term “picture setting,” I confess to a regrettable 
inexactness, in that “picture” might strictly be considered to apply only to 
graphic representation on a flat surface. But I have found no other term 
than “stage picture” for the non-architectural scene that the audience sees 
through the proscenium frame. It is a picture not in the flat, but with a 
certain depth, with space between the parts, with elements in relief—like 
those bastard things called “relief-paintings”—but a picture certainly in the 
sense of depicting a place chiefly with canvas and paint. 

Passing over many intermediate steps in the progress from spectacle on 
its own account toward the detailed illusional setting, and the matter of the 
relationship between the pioneering court and private theatres and the pub- 

* T have taken this quotation from Lily B. Campbell’s Scenes and Machines on the English 


Stage during the Renaissance (Cambridge University Press, 1923), a treasure-house of in- 
formation and old documents. 


28 STAGE DECORATION 


lic theatres—as also the steps in importing Italian methods into France and 
England, and the controversies in France over admission of spectacular 
elements into “regular” production—I wish to call the attention of the 
reader to the drawing by Cochin showing the tiny theatre built for Mme. 
de Pompadour in the palace at Versailles, during a production of Acis and 
Galatea (plate 32). The auditorium is depicted together with the scene on 
the stage, and in the contrast between the two halves of the illustration one 
may see just how far the setting had then traveled away from the ideal of 
the architectural stage. The scene is absolutely a painter’s conception, with 
the acting platform disguised and hidden. The actors have become hardly 
more than incidental figures in an easel-picture. 

Three other reproductions illustrate the same point: the masque setting 
by Inigo Jones is equally painter-like in conception; and the two theatres 
with settings illustrated in plate 33 indicate how completely the stage of 
the larger playhouse was lost to sight and a framed picture presented to the 
view of the audience. 

Of course the stage picture did not always, or often, appear as perfect 
as these engravings would lead one to believe; indeed, in the eighteenth and 
nineteenth centuries, after the “wing” settings had come into common use, 
if there were any architectural elements in the scene the lines were likely 
to be askew as seen from any but one point in the auditorium. As methods 
of changing settings developed (the first picture scenes were individual 
creations, too cumbersome to permit change), and as standardization of units 
became necessary, the decorators developed a mechanical system of back- 
drop and “wing-pieces.” These latter were easily removable screen pieces, 
made of canvas on wooden frames, that could be fastened on poles sliding 
in grooves off and on stage; and in the normal setting, rows of these towering 
painted screens, reaching from floor to ceiling-borders, and set parallel to 
the front curtain and backcloth, flanked the acting space. Toward the front 
the wings were set wider apart, so that the free stage area had much the 
same shape as in the older diminishing perspective scene—like a V with the 
sharp angle cut off by the back-drop. The “borders” closing the view at the 
top were a series of cloth strips, hung one behind another until the entire 
“top works” between proscenium and drop was cut off from the view of 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 29 


spectators in the front row of seats. From one point in the auditoritum the 
lines of the architecture painted on one wing-piece matched perfectly with 
that on the next piece behind, but from any point to right or left of this key- 
seat there was an evident discrepancy. Under the little-controlled lighting, 
too, the edges of the wings showed up in over-emphasis. The effect obtained 
was more often like that shown in the little cut opposite plate 34 than like 
the ideally articulated scenes commonly shown in reproductions. But the 
audiences—who by this time were considered incapable of accepting the con- 
vention of a formal stage standing for all scenes—came to accept the lack of 
real illusion in the wing scenes as “theatrical.” 

For a very long time the wing set served for practically all exteriors and 
interiors; and (except on the “apron”) there were no doorways to the stage, 
only space between the wings. The setting of the screen scene of The School 
for Scandal at Drury Lane Theatre is typical, with its window and bookcase 
painted on the backcloth, and its architectural elements represented in paint 
on wings slid in on the two sides of the playing space. Here a feature of the 
formal stage has persisted in the large undecorated forestage, or apron, 
with its permanent portals. As the scenic tradition ran down, it was a com- 
mon practice to paint on the walls all furniture not actually used during the 
performance. In vaudeville theatres to-day, you may run across the typical 
wing setting, without side walls, and occasionally you may even see painted-in 
furniture in addition to the painted mantels and low architectural relief. 

When the theatres began to be built with high stage lofts, more than 
twice as high as the proscenium opening, the disillusioning regularity of the 
wing-rows came to be broken by wider use of “hanging stuff.” This con- 
sisted of “leg-drops,” oblique pieces, porches, fountains, and the like, that 
could be “flied” when not in use and as easily let down into the scene when 
called for. The oblique pieces (not in the grooves) were, of course, a step 
toward the later box-set interior. A great deal of stage setting was by this 
time being accomplished by rigid rule, and often according to a convenient 
classification of palace set, kitchen set, garden set, drawing-room, etc.—a step 
back toward Serlio’s type scenes, indeed! A theatre just opening could order 
in from the scenic studio a half dozen stock scenes; and if its flying-space 
and its storage space for flats were ample enough to store all at once, it 


30 STAGE DECORATION 


would have on the premises a complete decorative equipment, sufficient with 
a little ingenuity for every need. By common usage a shorthand reference 
system developed, so that a playwright simply noted: “Sc. 2—an elegant 
apartment, 4 and 7G. French windows in flat R and L. Lattice C doors open, 
backed with garden flats. Garden cloth down from 4th to 7th G. painted with 
walks and flower beds. Set statues, flower pieces . . .” And the scene was 
easily made up from the drawing-room set and the garden set. A similar 
convention, of course, applied to actors: first and second lead, female lead, 
juvenile, adventuress, soubrette, villain, etc. All this routining and skimping 
of theatre materials, of course, had its effect on playwriting, so that most 
of the nineteenth century was a sterile period in the history of world drama 
—or was it that sterile and routine drama produced lifeless and careless 
setting? 

At the other extreme of decoration there were marvelously careful at- 
tempts to build up plausible magnificence, with a clever blending together 
of practicable units in the foreground and painted perspective beyond (plates 
36 and 37). If the producer had enough money at his command, he could 
cause to be built and painted almost exact duplicates of real palace halls and 
church interiors. He thus, in the imitation of show places, created natural 
settings some decades before naturalism as a creed came in (plate 38). In 
exterior scenes a sort of painter’s romantic naturalism came into style in the 
nineteenth century; and if any reader should see an apparent contradiction 
in the description, let him study the Parsifal forest of plate 39. Still it 
cannot justly be said that the painters ever gave a true and complete illusion 
of a forest except on a somewhat dark stage. 

In the end, indeed, the painted picture setting, which came to the dramatic 
stage first as an added element of spectacle and then as an attempt to depict 
the locality chosen by the dramatist for his action, failed to add to the truly 
dramatic values with its spectacle, and proved itself able at its best only to 
approximate actuality and at its worst to afford a tawdry and artificial 
caricature of reality. In the late nineteenth century the great tradition of 
scene painting had so badly run down in most places that nine out of ten 
plays were being presented in settings not only tasteless and untheatrical (in 
the best sense of “theatrical”) but ridiculously artificial, muddy in color 


THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND qd 


and without evidence of a knowledge of elementary picture composition. 
Where the grand manner still persisted the actor was surrounded with acres 
of painted magnificence that dwarfed him and injured the play as such. It 
was against the perpetrators of this double failure, in negligent artificiality 
and in unrelated painter’s elaboration, that the battle cry of the naturalists 
was hurled in the ’nineties. 

At this time the stage was a huge box with a curtained peep-hole opening 
in the front. When the curtain was raised the audience looked into a stage 
flanked by canvas wings, appearing frankly in rows as such, or with hinged 
flaps for variety or as “cut-outs” supplementing “leg-drops” and “set pieces” 
in an effort toward a painty sort of reality. Scene painting had had glories 
of its own—but the world was beginning to question whether painting had 
ever really belonged on the stage of the essential acted drama. 


Ill 
NATURALISM 


HAT is sometimes questionably termed the first modern revolt in 

methods of staging occurred in the late years of the nineteenth 
century. Noting the ridiculous artifice and fake of the pictures in which the 
plays, not only of the old artificial dramatists but of the current realistic 
playwrights, pretending to truth above all else, were being presented, a 
few producers and directors here and there set about to make the back- 
grounds more reasonable and more natural. The leaders in this progressive 
work were Otto Brahm in Europe and David Belasco in America, and 
Antoine was its pioneer in France. 

The revolt, if such it may be called, was purely in the interests of natu- 
ralism. It achieved a fresh appropriateness of play and setting, but it marked 
only the final reach of realism, the ultimate photographic achievement at the 
- end of a centuries-old obsession with the observed thing, with imitation of 
the surface of life, with the truthfulness of casual detail, as distinguished 
from the search to be made later for the living spirit, imaginative, emo- 
tional and formal qualities. This first reach forward is seen now as im- 
portant in the aspect of a clearing of the ground, but the type of setting 
it developed is in itself as unfitted to to-day’s theatre and to-day’s drama 
as the thing it dethroned, and almost as ridiculous and distracting. It was 
the stage parallel to that achievement in painting by which each hair of the 
cow’s hide was made apparent separately, and each leaf of the tree depicted 
with exactitude. 

Brahm was busy with the staging of Ibsen and other giants of realism, 
whereas Belasco had somewhat watered material to inspire his inventiveness. 
But about the same time both became convinced that the setting must be 
made of a piece with the “slice-of-life” drama. This consideration led them 
first to banish such absolute unnaturalnesses as furniture painted on the 
room walls and loosely flapping painted scene drops in landscapes. From 
this it was a natural progression to the observation that painted shadows 


34 STAGE DECORATION 


seldom accorded with true shadows, seldom could be matched with the actual 
sources of light. Up to this time the mouldings, door-frames and other low 
relief in the stage room had been almost universally painted on to the walls, 
under an ancient convention of shadowing. This noticeably artificial make- 
shift was abolished, and actual mouldings, door-frames, mantels and win- 
dow-frames were brought into the scene. At the same time the walls were 
made more solid, so that the canvas “flats” of which they were constructed 
no longer quaked at the slightest touch. Where doors had flourished before 
in unnatural profusion, one or two reasonable doorways were now seen to be 
enough—and more natural. The property man, who had long exercised his 
ingenuity, fancy and taste, if any, in furnishing the stage room, according to 
a convenient classification of palace sets, kitchen sets, etc., was now restrained; 
the clutter of unrelated ornamental and useful pieces was cleared out, and 
such furniture put in as might be found in a real room in a real house of the 
period. The producer might even send over to the theatre a suite of his 
own, to be sure it was actual used and usable stuff. 

If the business had stopped there, and then if a little real taste had 
been exercised, the change would have represented an immense and per- 
manent gain. For the scene had been stripped of its ridiculously false trap- 
pings, a lot of things wrongly inherited from opera and magnificently ro- 
mantic drama had been discarded, and a new solidity and material correctness 
had been achieved. But the artists of the Belasco school of naturalism were 
aiming at a scene as full of display in its way as the operatic sort had been 
in its way. They wanted nothing less than a scene that would come out and 
proclaim that it was real. 

They developed a philosophy of “the importance of the little things,” 
and in an attempt to portray actual rooms with absolute photographic per- 
fection, they brought into the setting a profusion of casual objects. They 
thought that by assembling enough correct little things they could achieve 
truth. The actor who before had played in settings negligently and taw- 
drily built up with whatever the scene painter and property man found 
easiest to bring in, or in scenes gorgeously built up with mountains of un- 
related magnificence, now found himself in a scene a-glitter with naturalistic 
detail, self-consciously proclaiming itself a real room by virtue of its 


NATURALISM 35 


ability to exhibit real books in real bookcases, real hat-racks with real hats 
on them, real phonographs and newspapers and telephones, vistas of real 
plants through real windows, real paneled doors, and a hundred added 
real accidentals as observed by the producer in lived-in rooms. 

Thus one went to the theatre partly to marvel at meticulously portrayed 
museum examples of contemporary living-rooms, libraries and brothels. And 
to make the marvel more enduring, the producer added certain “effects,” 
not of the old spectacular sort, but ingeniously true to life. Thus one re- 
members the two clocks in the same setting, striking the hour many seconds 
apart, as they actually would in your home or mine (a bit that secured 
newspaper attention from coast to coast); the second complete room, beyond 
that in which the action is passing, opened to view to beguile the audience 
with a sudden glimpse of a completely furnished den or a family at table, 
“as if one were actually in a house”; the perfectly imitated squeak of a 
pneumatic elevator, so perfectly imitated that every spectator turned to his 
neighbor to comment on the marvel. And when the play’s locale was an 
operating room in a hospital, or the composing room of a newspaper, or a 
Childs’ Restaurant, there was no limit to what the producer might introduce 
by way of satisfying curiosity about surgical machinery or linotype machines 
or how the other half eats. 

All of which, of course, is hardly better than pandering in the name 
of art to humanity’s craving for novelty and its enjoyment of perfect and 
elaborate imitation. Originating in a desire to rid the stage and play of the 
distractions of a ridiculous artificiality, the movement toward naturalism in 
settings ended in burying the action amid numberless distractions of its 
own sort. In the naturalistic scene there was no more aid to the essential 
drama than in the nineteenth century wing set, no more art—only actuality 
transferred and exploited. It was still the picture of a setting that was built 
up, and not yet even a simplified atmospheric picture. 

And yet there was this net gain toward the next revolution: the painted 
shadows that never corresponded to the actual shadows were banished from 
the scene, the painted perspective that seldom matched up with the actual 
perspective of the pictured scene was laughed out of existence, and in gen- 
eral the worst excesses of the traditional scene painter were put aside for all 


36 STAGE DECORATION 


time; the box-set interior, if too profusely detailed, was made solid and 
after a fashion honest, and a general material rightness was achieved—a 
rightness that afforded a real foundation for creative work by those who came 
in turn to strip the stage room again, and to “decorate” not realistically and 
profusely, but with restraint and taste. 

The naturalistic development, as a matter of fact, never quite satisfied 
its own most devoted practitioners in the matter of certain problems arising 
in the staging of outdoor scenes. A forest scene, for instance, was difficult 
and expensive to set with real trees; and the painted sort, no matter how 
carefully each leaf was depicted in accordance with nature, somehow al- 
ways afforded a feeling of second-rate trees, not quite alive. The larger 
and finer the scene called for by the author, the more meager seemed the 
“fiction of reality” achieved by the stage artist. 

In the matter of indoor settings, the realists developed “the convention 
of the fourth wall.” That is, they decreed that playwrights should write 
their plays exactly as if they were looking into a room from which the 
side wall next them had been removed (without being noticed by the 
characters within); and many were the devices used by the scenic artists 
to convey this conception visibly to the audiences. A favorite indication of 
the missing fourth side of the room was a set of andirons placed down to- 
ward the footlights, with actors coming to it every little while to warm 
their hands at a fire which presumably had been removed with the wall. 
In the very act of removing the wall, of course, in adopting a convention, 
the realists confessed the weakness of their creed, and foreshadowed the 
collapse of the entire system of writing and production developed by them. 
For it is true that the nearer to perfection an imitation comes, the less value 
it has on its own account; on the stage, the moment the point arrives 
where the spectator exclaims “How lifelike that is!” the dramatic web is 
broken. Ultimately the dramatist or the scenic worker reaches the impasse 
created by his own skill and has to adopt a convention—some device which 
in itself carries the confession that this after all is not nature but a work 
of artifice. 

The realists became even more strongly entrenched in the theatres in the 
last years of the century than the “old style” artists had been a decade or 


NATURALISM 37 


two earlier. The fight for naturalism in setting as in playwriting had been 
won only after a bitter and prolonged struggle, and most of the world of the 
theatre had come to look on realism as on a religion. (The realists ob- 
jected to the term “naturalism,” although their imitativeness was exact 
enough to warrant the name; naturalism being in my definition the ultimate 
point in realism, not only emphasis on the observed fact as against revelation 
of spirit and beauty of form, but exploitation of imitation on its own photo- 
graphic account, and glorification of accidental detail.) 

But a new generation of insurgents was growing up, with two giant figures 
to nurture them with a different ideal, two artists greater than any developed 
under the realistic banner: Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia. These later 
progressives not only doubted that realism was a final achievement on the 
stage; they came forward with a definite conviction that although the setting 
might be literally correct according to the playwright’s directions, with just 
the number of doors and windows needed, and the right properties not too 
many times multiplied, it would never fulfill its whole duty by mere material 
conformance: scale in the setting, design of the parts, and possibly something 
called style might serve art and the stage better. One practitioner after an- 
other reflected that after all art is in itself a convention. And had not many 
a philosopher commented on the great gap existing between the exact and 
the true? 


IV 
Peet ASTEFUL REALISTIC SETTING 


HE simplifying and making tasteful of the realistic setting, the dress- 

ing of contemporary plays in appropriate and often lovely scenic 
clothes, the development of machinery to make quick and plausible the 
passing of the scenes before the eye, and particularly the advance in lighting 
efficiency, affording not a little atmospheric beauty—these changes, accom- 
plished in the last twenty-five years in innumerable theatres, and capitalized 
more for the setting forth of a dying type of play than in the service of any 
emerging new drama, constitute for most observers the modern revolution 
in stage decoration. As a matter of fact, the notable improvement in current 
practice since 1900 has been in most theatres only a surface change. The 
deeper revolution that is still developing in the theatre, the fundamental 
upheaval that aims at nothing less than the overthrow of all phases of 
realism after a reign extending through centuries, the change that parallels 
the progress toward an accepted modernism in the other arts, promises to 
go far beyond this general dressing-up of realistic plays or atmospheric aid 
to the realistic staging of old plays. 

But the surface change in the better realistic playhouses during the last 
quarter-century is in itself a phenomenon worth intensive study, if only 
because it brought prettiness and light and grace where those qualities seldom 
existed before. The movement affords a perfect parallel to Impressionism in 
painting, which, despite its apparently revolutionary character at first, proved 
in the end to be only a special phase of realistic painting, depending upon 
observation of an evanescent aspect of surface reality, an immediate “effect” 
of nature, but nature and observation nevertheless. Impressionism in easel 
painting brought in fresh coloring, and love of light, and freedom from 
over-detailing, despite its shallowness; and just about as much can be said 
justly for “the new stage decoration” of 1900-1925. 

When Gordon Craig and Adolphe Appia came to the theatre in the 
years just before the close of the old century, they foreshadowed—nay, they 


40 STAGE DECORATION 


instigated—that true revolutionary struggle that is only half fought out 
even to-day. They never compromised with realism, nor did they ever coun- 
sel their followers to do so. And yet they are responsible indirectly for that 
minor revolution within realistic limits which has brought the bulk of the 
world’s theatres to a pretty form of Impressionistic stage setting. _ 

Craig and Appia, clear-sighted theorists, prophets, and both endowed with 
a gift for written expression, were also practical artists of the stage when 
opportunity came to practice without compromise. Because they would not 
accept cramping conditions, because they would not exploit the most obvious 
virtues of a new art expression unless they were given opportunity to go 
back to beginnings and build on a wholly new foundation, they were driven 
to work largely in by-paths and at times in the wilderness, far from the 
market-place playhouses. Though they have wielded an enormous influence 
by means of their writings, and their ideas that have been repeated up and 
down the world in many languages, they themselves have pretty much stayed 
aloof from the contemporary stage—because that stage is designed primarily 
for the exhibition of realism, and is controlled by those who have never seen 
a vision beyond realism. 

But the followers of Appia and Craig practically all took the more rea- 
sonable path, as the less extreme artist and the lesser prophet take it. They 
were fired with the new idea, stung with Craig’s provocative urge to be up 
and doing in the theatre—and they turned to the only theatre at hand. In 
compromising as their teachers had refused to do, they were not necessarily 
betraying a trust, or dragging down something fine. They were merely 
clothing something less noble in clothes that would become nobility. Because 
the current drama was overwhelmingly realistic, and because they wanted to 
work on the only existing stages, they conveniently forgot the more extreme 
of the Craig-Appia teachings and set out to apply practically the more obvi- 
ous ones. And be it said at once, they did a beautiful job within the limita- 
tions. 

Because the ideas of the two giant figures were thus compromised in so 
much that has been done more or less in their name, I am leaving discussion 
of their personal service and their deeper philosophy until later, when we 
shall come to the really modernist stages, to the experiments of those who 


mie TASTE FOR REALISTIC SETTINGS 41 


have been true to anti-realism. Just now I am setting out to show how the 
naturalist stage setting within the proscenium frame was changed gradually 
to a simplified, tasteful and often restful picture that added to the play’s 
appeal and did not too seriously take attention from the actor. 

An artist of even the keenest understanding, after seeing an exhibition of 
Craig’s designs, and reading such of Craig’s and Appia’s books as were 
available fifteen years ago, might turn to the theatre saying: “Unity is the 
great thing. To gain unity in the whole production we can help by clearing 
out the useless clutter on the stage. Simplify the setting, and then do every- 
thing possible to make the actor the center of the picture.” There is sound 
principle here, and even so little seemed then to afford a basis for an entirely 
different form of production. 

The idea of simplification, as a means to greater unity, had a double im- 
portance. It could be used both in opposition to the flagrantly naturalistic 
setting, the over-detailed real picture, and to any survivals of the earlier 
display staging. Simplification was a weapon against elaboration of any sort, 
natural, romantic, archaeological or painty. “Don’t choke the eye,” said 
one designer. Another, who saw farther, perhaps, wrote that “a good simple 
imitation temple is better than a bad involved one.” Instead of the carefully 
documented scene, one must build up a serviceable outline of a place, with 
restraint and a “technique of intimation.” The structure and the machinery 
of the naturalistic stage and setting could be retained. But the surface must be 
stripped. 

Simplification, applied in any mature art, is likely to prove beneficial. But 
it soon turns out that simplicity alone is not enough. That a stage picture is 
unpretentious, that it is characterized by elimination of the inessential and 
the undramatic, is only a negative virtue. So, beyond unity and simplifica- 
tion, the record of progress is marked at intervals by the employment of a 
series of more positive catchwords—in approximately this order: mood, 
synthesis, suggestion, design, the plastic, stylization. 

If the merely simplified setting was not wholly right, though the material 
details were correct, it was easy to see that what it lacked was the intangible 
thing called mood. This subtler quality might hide the bareness. Progress 
in this direction was the easier because the lighting equipment of the stage 


42 STAGE DECORATION 


was becoming immeasurably more flexible and capable, and the quality of 
light more sensitively expressive. The old lighting had been able to set out 
clearly a number of literal facts about a place, but the newer lighting made 
it possible almost to project the atmosphere of it, without stressing exact 
locality or material detail. The little things as well as the big could be 
softened and faded off into dimness. Specific interest was thus subordinated 
to evocation of mood. But it became apparent that “mood” was a word not 
for a thing visual and decorative alone but to designate the whole feeling 
of a production, play as well as background. And perhaps the best thing 
that came out of the discussion of mood was that it led to the question of 
achieving a synthesis of all the elements of production. 

In my opening paragraphs on theory I wrote enough about synthesis as an 
ideal. It was during the talk about synthetic methods that the decorators 
generously stepped down saying: “Our work above all else must be sub- 
ordinate to one man’s conception of the whole production, play, scene, light- 
ing, action. There must be perfect codrdination of all emotional appeals, 
to the eye as well as to the ear.” They began to recognize as never before 
that anything they might achieve was valueless theatrically unless directly 
and emotionally related to an artist-director’s scheme and vision of the 
production, that the written play itself was only an incomplete expression 
of the art of the theatre, that the acting of it in unsympathetic surroundings 
was only a corruption of the dramatist’s intended whole; and finally that 
the synthesis of the three elements, play, acting and setting, alone could 
be considered a complete realization of the art of the theatre. The keynote 
of everything must be found in the dramatist’s script, and the conception 
of the means for carrying the flow of action through in harmony must 
be found in the regisseur. The decorator must serve these two—while in a 
different physical sense serving the actor. A theory was even developed 
that every truly theatrical play has in itself an art value over and above the 
literary, acting and spectacular values, and that the grasping of this architec- 
tonic thing in the play, its projection on the stage, is the chief work of the 
regisseur, and to contribute to its realization the only work of the decorator. 
Here one has the basis for the sayings that the decorator must work only 


fer TASTE HOR RHALISTIC SETTINGS 43 


with “an answering mind” or only to “complete the thought” of the drama- 
tist and director. 

Mood and synthesis were vague words, offering no clue to principles for 
immediate application to the visual problem. “Suggestion” offered more for 
the working decorator to hold to. As a matter of fact, it is equally vague 
unless one knows what it is that is to be suggested; but the designers found 
a good toe-hold in it because they were dealing with realistic plays, and 
could immediately set out to make settings suggestive of reality. Simplicity 
had degenerated to bareness when pursued for its own sake; but simplifica- 
tion could be put to work constructively if the artist exercised a nice dis- 
crimination in selecting suggestive details out of nature: a tree for a forest, 
a rug and a throne against a tapestry for the king’s audience hall, a desk 
for an office. 

It might even be carried further. In the old days, if a play called for a 
scene before the pyramids of Egypt, the scene painter, nothing daunted, 
had looked up some books about Egypt and painted a scene with gigantic 
if not wholly convincing pyramids. According as his training had been al- 
together in the scenic studios or partly at the art academies, he produced 
either a really terrible, muddied, sign-painter’s caricature of grandeur, or 
a landscape not at all bad—but wholly untheatric in either case. In this 
later period of simplicity and intimation, however, at least one designer 
properly despaired of ever depicting the pyramids. So he cleared out the 
scene just as far as the playwright’s directions would permit, and threw the 
shadow of a pyramid over it. The play and the actors were thus unob- 
trusively served with an unassuming suggestion of the background they 
needed. Adolphe Appia in his later work, when his stage and setting were 
hardly more than a floor and a wall, adopted the same device and threw 
the shadow of a tree across the scene. 

The more usual and concrete means of suggestion is, however, to let a 
single Gothic pillar or arch stand for a church, a flat wall and noble door- 
way for a palace, a cramped room and steep stairway for a cellar. Thus may 
the illusion of grandeur be evoked, or of meanness; the atmosphere of tragic 
largeness, of sentimental laziness, of soaring aspiration. 

When one simplifies zastefully, one unconsciously employs design and 


44 STAGE DECORATION 


composition. Pictorial design or architectural design may be utilized to make 
the setting itself harmonious, graceful, restful. Beyond that there is use 
for the principles of pictorial composition for sheerly dramatic effectiveness. 
Thus in a memorable setting for The Devil’s Garden, the designer placed 
a prisoner in a single isolated chair, balanced by a group of investigating 
officials about a desk—on the elementary yard-arm principle. Indeed, the 
eye of the spectator may be led to rest at any point in the scene as demanded 
by the dramatist’s directions or the regisseur’s conception. Through poor 
design the spectator’s eye will be drawn out of the picture, as in those set- 
tings where side windows open on compelling vistas, or his gaze will be 
drawn restlessly back and forth by separated and opposing points of interest. 
Or by cunning design, his attention can be concentrated on the central playing 
space. All the principles of scale, proportion, contrast, balance and pictorial 
rhythm are applicable here. 

The stage designer thus brought design to aid him after he had stripped 
the scene for simplification, and had chosen the few essential and character- 
istic motives or properties for suggestion. He arranged the scene as care- 
fully as a painter lays out his lines and masses on his canvas. The setting 
became truly a pictorial decoration, and not merely a representation of a 
place. Another asset of the painter, color, was utilized as never before. The 
whole gamut of aids that we have been discussing have a color application 
as well as a line-and-form application: color simplification, color suggestion, 
color composition. And in those more intangible fields of mood and atmos- 
phere, color psychology, color quality and color harmony came to have 
unexampled importance. By the delicacy, the intimation, of the pervading 
color, the designer could affect the spectator subconsciously; by his under- 
standing of colors under light, he built settings into a loveliness of aspect 
beyond the dreams of other generations. The fullness of color of a play as 
set and directed by Robert Edmond Jones in New York, or by Pirchan and 
Jessner in Berlin, is likely to leave in retrospect a memorable overtone—as 
if the action had passed to the accompaniment, hardly noticed at the time, 
of a color symphony. 

There has been more than a little confusion recently over the cry that 
the stage above all else must be plastic. When the term first began to be 


THE TASTE FOR REALISTIC SETTINGS 45 


used in connection with decoration, it meant hardly more than that the de- 
signer used real properties and real low relief in his settings, instead of paint- 
ing these things on the canvas. Gradually it came to be applied as a desig- 
nation for the whole movement away from the painted perspective setting, 
away from the stage decorated according to the easel painter’s conception 
and methods, and toward a more solidly architectural—a plastic setting. It 
does not, however, as generally used, mean a truly architectural or formal 
stage. If a designer discards painted perspective and painted shadows, if he 
no longer paints a semblance of the scene called for by the playwright, and 
paints no objects ow the canvas, he is conceiving the setting plastically. That 
is, his canvases stretched on frames, the “flats,” appear as one side of a 
solid, instead of being painted with a picture representing two sides. There 
is a somewhat difficult distinction here, in that the total setting is still being 
conceived indubitably as a picture, a stage picture within a proscenium frame, 
whereas the properties in it and the walls, pillars, stairs, etc., are set in 
plastically. The downright plastic stage, of course, is a wholly architectural 
or sculptural affair, as the stage of Jacques Copeau at the Vieux Colombier 
is architectural, and Norman-Bel Geddes’ stages (as seen in models) for 
Dante and The Mother of Christ are sculptural. In these cases the stage, 
the platform for acting, is itself i the round, not merely the things placed 
on it. 

The whole theory of the plastic setting is based on the unchallengeable 
fact that the actor always appears in the round, and therefore a pictured 
background on the wall or walls behind him will always be out of con- 
sonance with his presence. | 

To simplify the scene, to suggest far more than was shown, to utilize 
plastic materials, to apply laws of composition in both line-and-mass and in 
color—all this still left something to be desired, even in the realistic pic- 
ture. That something was finally found in stylization. 


V 
STYLIZATION 


TYLE 1s an intangible, almost indescribable thing that is added to a 

picture or a work of architecture or a stage setting out of the artist’s 
creative talent, a sustained decorative treatment that lies in his individual 
manner of conception and working, a quality that distinguishes his solution 
of a given artistic problem from the solution of any other artist. Stylization 
implies in the beginning a harmony of the settings with the essential spirit 
or “tone” of the play, and after that a harmony of the various settings 
throughout the production; and above that is a sustained quality, a likeness 
in the sort of visual beauty throughout. 

When an earlier generation of designers undertook to present classic 
dramas in settings and costumes archaeologically correct down to the last 
detail, they were taking a step toward stylization of a hard, dry sort. They 
thought to unify the play by studious application of a style out of history. 
They doubtless gained something toward singleness of impression thereby. 
But that impression was not truly emotional or intrinsically artistic. 

The motif of the visual stylization may sometimes be very obvious in the 
production as seen on the stage. Thus I once witnessed a performance which 
I believe was stylized out of someone’s feeling that regal red plush summed 
up the spirit of the period of the play’s action. A designer may stylize 
out of an architectural peculiarity of a certain time, or out of the shape of the 
ladies’ skirts, or out of lavender and old lace. Stylization may, of course, 
be drawn out of something not primarily visual; it may find its origin in a 
feeling for certain music that would befit this particular play, or out of a 
theory of a certain formality of gesture, or out of a particular rhythm in 
the spoken words—and in this case the designer’s contribution is a running 
visual equivalent for the original feeling. It may be, of course, that the 
life of the play’s period was rococo, so that a reminiscently rococo styliza- 
tion would be the only right method. The designer’s conception of his set- 
tings, in short, may arise out of an external detail or out of a suggestion of 


48 STAGE DECORATION 


the author, or out of a feeling conveyed by the text—but appropriate to 
the play it must always be, and sustained throughout the production. It 1s, 
in a sense, a harmonic conventionalization made creative by the individual 
genius of the designer. | 

An external form of stylization, drawn from the art of painting, is that 
which imposes on a play a series of settings designed after a well-known 
manner, such as that of Whistler or of Beardsley, or that of the Munich 
posteresque painters. Such an alien style seldom helps the drama, although 
it may divert the attention and give a minor independent pleasure briefly. 
But the actors and action seldom fit back restfully into it. Many of the 
recent attempts to accomplish Cubistic and Expressionistic staging have in- 
volved nothing more than a transfer of the principles of modernist painting 
to one element of the production, the settings, leaving the play and acting 
untouched and unrelated. In stylizing his work at all, be it added, the scene 
designer is only belatedly catching up with progress in the other arts; but 
borrowing from them direct has not helped his case. 

At its worst, stylization on the stage may thus be an imposition of a thing 
borrowed or stolen unreasonably; at its best it is an addition as a part of the 
regisseur’s plan and a completion of the dramatist’s intention. 

The first examples of practical stylization that were brought widely to 
the notice of the world were doubtless conceived primarily as pictorial deco- 
ration and not theatrically. The startlingly simple, posteresque and colorful 
stage pictures that Emil Orlik and Ernst Stern designed for Max Rein- 
hardt’s productions are likely to seem now a trifle heavily decorative; the 
Shakespearean performances directed by Granville Barker in scenes by Nor- 
man Wilkinson and Albert Rutherston, delicate and enchanting as they were, 
seem a little like transfers from story-book illustration; and the settings 
which Jacques Rouché induced leading French insurgent painters to do for 
his productions at the Théatre des Arts between 1910 and 1913 now can be 
judged as interesting instances of newly found styles in painting being 
brought bodily to the stage. The Viennese decorator, the easel painter who 
was rediscovering conventionalization and structure after the debauch of 
formlessness incident to early Impressionism, the rediscoverers of peasant 
art, and the lush oriental decorators, all had a hand at improving the scene. 


SELYLIZATION: © 4. 49 


Among my illustrations I have tried to include chiefly examples that illus- 
trate typically theatrical stylization, but traces of these various transferred 
methods can doubtless be found. I have carefully covered the field, however, 
so far as varying types of play are concerned, plates 54 to 66 ranging through 
opera, romantic play and realistic pieces. 

The difficulties of stylization, and the failures after honest effort, can 
usually be traced to failure sufficiently to consider the actor (granted that 
the play script itself does not contain the seeds of disintegration and dis- 
cord); the designer finds his chief pitfall where lies the opportunity for a 
display of style not strictly in accord with the postulate that the player 
must dominate the scene. There is one form of contemporary production, 
however, in which the artist has found latitude for a show of virtuosity 
without injury to the essential action. In the dance-drama the perfect op- 
portunity for a gorgeous sensuous stylization has been found. 

In the forms developed by the Ballets Russes particularly, decoration 
has a more positive function than in the truly dramatic forms. Color plays 
an enormous part, pretentious and stirring scenery aids rather than detracts 
from the total effect; in short, the director leans heavily on all sensuous 
aids. There is no close-knit story of which the spell may be broken by a 
“loud” setting, no dialogue to be favored with quietness and intimately 
hushed surroundings. 

The appeal of the dance-drama is primarily by sight and by abstract sound 
—music. The effect is compounded out of color and line used creatively, 
movement and music. It is an art that aims at intoxication of the senses. 
The synthesis here is of all sensuous elements, with the intellect and all that 
addresses it stilled. The stylization oftener than not arises out of a conception 
of a gorgeous picture or a color or a visual effect. The painter becomes not 
the servant of an author and director, but fellow-creator. 

Leon Bakst, the acknowledged master of the dance-drama setting, once 
wrote: “Nowadays it is the painter who, taking the place of the erudite 
director, should create everything, know everything, foresee and organize 
everything. It is the painter who must be master of the situation, understand 
its finesse, subtleties, and decide the style of the piece; to his plastic judg- 
ment and taste must be subordinated the thousand details which are com- 


50 STAGE DECORATION 


bined in the imposing ensemble of a great work of the theatre.” In this 
spirit Bakst and his fellow artists, Benois, Roerich, Golovine and Anisfeld 
picked up the old painted-perspective scene, glorified its painty virtues and 
defects, and transformed the whole with an amazing richness of color and 
sweep of line. They built, out of painted canvas, scenes that outdid in big- 
ness, voluptuousness and lusciousness anything ever seen on canvas before. 
Red and green simply played their way through the passionate Sheherazade, 
and reds, oranges and yellows kept Tamar intense throughout. 

This achievement of an orientally rich stylization with paint had little to 
do with the sort of theatre dreamed by Craig and Appia. Nor did it link 
up with the work of that larger group of designers who thought they were 
realizing the new theatre by dressing the current drama tastefully. These 
Russian Ballet people forgot simplicity and suggestion, they utilized painted 
perspective, and often enough they piled up mountains of scenery. The 
truth of the matter is simply this: Bakst developed a gorgeous technique 
for the sort of drama that lies in one little corner of the field of theatre 
aesthetics, and outside that field, in any other sort of play, his designs would 
seem an intrusion, garish, overwhelming. 

Those of us who have found a thrilling, at times an ecstatic pleasure 
in the intense dance-drama and its sumptuous scenes are inclined to find 
agreeable on rare occasions another sort of exaggeration that similarly in- 
volves a transfer from the graphic arts. When a primarily fantastic play 
is to be clothed, the most successful sort of stylization seems to be that 
which approximates contemporary fairy-book illustration. The highly con- 
ventionalized treatment and the sweetly delicate coloring seem to add to 
the sentimental mood of most so-called fantastic writers. Just how wide is 
the gap between fantasy and direct imaginative reach (as in Shakespeare so 
often), we need not inquire here. For fantasy as we have it, a Rackham 
drawing seems right. 

One of the finest and perhaps the best-known example is the Moscow 
Art Theatre’s mounting of Maeterlinck’s The Blue Bird, as conceived by 
the director Stanislavsky and painted by Egoroff. It is strictly a graphic 
artist’s method of picture making that is imposed on the play, but here is 
such a wealth of pretty decorativeness, so much that fits in visually with the 


STYLIZATION 5I 


sentimental other-worldliness of the text, that one must find the “spread” 
of the settings enriching rather than disturbing. Perhaps it is because usu- 
ally fantasy as written for the stage partakes of a literary sort of imagina- 
tiveness, rather than theatric reaches, that the illustrative setting so befits 
it. It is in any case, of course, outside the main stream of progress in 
stagecraft. 

It is but a short step from this sort of conventionalization to purely 
symbolic setting—if there can be such a thing in the theatre. A symbol, in 
its most direct definition, is something that stands for something else, a 
thing that stands for more than itself. It is clear, then, that as soon as an 
artist begins to exercise a selective sense, to make the setting suggestive 
rather than literal, he is traveling toward the use of symbolism, if not 
accomplishing it in some degree. How far he must go actually to arrive 
as a symbolist, I do not know. And though I have heard of settings in 
which a device on a curtain was made to act as a symbol for all the facts 
of a scene, I am unable to put my hand on any picture that will illustrate 
the point—nor is my memory clear about any example. It seems to me that 
the progression from literal to suggestive settings will ultimately carry the 
artist toward abstraction rather than toward symbolism—though I doubt 
that either can be achieved in an absolute sense. So far the talk about sym- 
bolism as a chief aim of modern stage decoration has only proved con- 
fusing. Either one has a certain amount of conventionalization within the 
reasonably realistic picture, or one goes flatly over to Expressionistic means. 


Vi 


THE PROGRESS IN MECHANICS AND 
LIGHTING 


CCOMPANYING at first the progress toward naturalness, and then 
that toward appropriateness of setting, between 1895 and 1920, there 

was a steady gain in the mechanical means toward ease and flexibility of 
scene-shifting and lighting. The machinery of the stage was developed to 
a marvelous efficiency, and the lighting equipment became a delicate and 
intricate instrument on which an artist could play a sensitive accompani- 


ment to the dramatic action. 


In the days before naturalism the scenic designers had developed an 
amazing array of machinery for rearing vast edifices of scenery and for 
trick effects. When the settings had become so elaborate that it took twenty 


minutes and half an hour between scenes to 
accomplish a change, a new sort of stage 
mechanics became necessary, to permit the 
scenes to be brought before the eye more 
rapidly. 

The older stage was a fairly open box- 
like space, with floor sloping down slightly 
toward the auditorium, pierced with a pro- 
scenium opening less than half as high as 
the roof of the box, and approximately 
one-half as wide as the greatest stage 
width; within this rectangular space, the 
portion looked into by the audience was 
flanked on each side by rows of “wings” 
made to slide on or off stage in grooves, 
and it was closed at the back by a painted 
“drop”—one of many immense painted 
curtains hanging above and ready to be let 


A “wing” setting, from behind. 


54 STAGE DECORATION 


down from the gridiron; and the top space was cut off from the eye by suc- 
ceeding narrow strips called “borders.” An “apron” might extend the front 
of the stage considerably before the curtain line. This stage was lighted al- 
most entirely by footlights and a few border lights placed just inside the top 
edge of the proscenium arch and perhaps down its sides, and possibly by 
strips in the wings. 

With the adoption of the box-set scene, the setting began to be made of 
independent and free-moving “flats” (canvas pieces stretched over light 
wooden frames) lashed together at the back with rope. When an interior 


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scene was set, it had the appearance of a small box constructed of canvas on 
a wooden frame, set within the larger permanent box that was the stage- 
building. The wings were gone, there was less hanging stuff overhead, and 
the borders had disappeared except for emergency use. When the scene was 
“struck,” the ceiling, really a huge screen hinged into two or more pieces, 
was pulled up, folding on the hinged edge; the ropes were unlashed and 
the sections or “flats” were drawn by stagehands along the floor like tower- 
ing screens, to resting places against the walls or in racks. The grooves 
disappeared—they were useless now because the side walls of the box scene 
cut directly across them—the slope was taken out of the stage floor, and the 
size of the proscenium opening was cut down to provide more strategic 


MECHANICS AND CIGHEING 55 


positions for border lights and for individual spot and flood lights. (The 
drawing of a simple box setting as sketched by Ernst Stern on Reinhardt’s 
stage indicates both the method of putting together the flats, and the manner 
of building the setting in open space rather than with slid-in wings. I am 
adding also an exterior scene of a slightly earlier vintage, of the inter- 
mediate period when the parallel wings had disappeared, but with borders 
above and a painted backcloth. It may serve to remind the reader that al- 
though I jump from type to type, there was evolutionary change, with 
many mixed examples between. ) 


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The comparative immensity of the stage was characteristic of theatres built 
during the naturalistic period as it was during the era of display settings, 
and this immensity more or less persists to-day. In plate 39 is a repro- 
duction of a “section” of the Paris Opera House, built just at the end of 
the “old style” period, to show the large ramped stage in relation to the 
auditorium, the litter of hanging scenery, the stage maze of operating bal- 
conies and stairways, and the necessary two floors of machinery over the 
stage space and the six floors below. How far had we come then from the 
Greek platform for acting! And how far from continuous action! 

One of the earliest devices to hasten change of scene was the revolving 


56 STAGE DECORATION 


stage. This invention, in use in Japan before Europe and America discov- 
ered its potentialities, allowed the designer to set three, four or even five 
full scenes at one time, to be rolled before the proscenium opening in turn 
when needed. The revolving turn-table occupies, of course, only the center 
portion of the stage space, being wider than the proscenium opening, touch- 
ing approximately the curtain line at the front of its circumference, and 
leaving at the back and sides ample working space. Before the first rise of 
the curtain the four or five scenes are set up with flats, cut-outs and prop- 
erties complete, each scene being either a small box-set just wide and high 
enough to fill the proscenium opening, or 
partly open and devised in such a way that 
the eye of the spectator in looking up and 
off beyond it encounters only an architec- 
tural or wooded vista or a cyclorama drop 
farther back on the stage. This circular 
platform, bearing perhaps all the settings 
required by the play, is made to turn on a 
vertical shaft which runs down into a con- 
crete anchorage under the center of the 
circle. It may be made to turn by means 
of electricity or by hand. 

With such a mechanical aid the scene 
designer need worry no longer over long 
waits between acts and scenes. The theatres of Germany, where most of the 
revolving stages have been installed, are enabled thereby to present Shake- 
speare and other dramatists demanding (if one does not believe in the for- 
mal changeless stage) many successive settings during a single performance, 
with a despatch and a sense of visual continuity unknown elsewhere. 

I am taking my diagram of the practical working of the device from 
that most famous of all examples, Max Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater in 
Berlin. The drehbiihne is here set for what we may call five major scenes 
of The Merchant of Venice. The extensive Street Scene 1 probably filled 
the entire width of the proscenium opening, with a view of a Venetian canal, 
street, bridge and gondolas. The vista between buildings really runs into 


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MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 57 


the back of Street Scene 2, and the building facades flanking it are moulded 
on the shells of the two box-set interiors on either side. When the action 
of the first scene had passed, the stage merely had to be moved a quarter 
turn to bring the Room in Portia’s House before the proscenium opening. 
Another quarter turn was enough to swing the scene for Act I, Scene 3, a 
Public Place in Venice, before the audience. The next two scenes are the 
same in reverse order, thus getting back to the original Street Scene 1. It is 
probable that the designer and director did not feel it necessary to set sepa- 
rately the Room in Shylock’s House (I did not see the production), but 
played it instead in the scene provided for the later direction “Before Shy- 
lock’s House.” This is cleverly worked en 

into the plan of the five-part setting as oo ee SOs 
one corner of one of the street scenes: a | 
stairway and door that before had been 
half-hidden became the center of an 
exterior composition, the street scene 
glimpsed beyond now having a different 
aspect on account of the changed angle of 
sight. The remaining six scenes of this act 
and four scenes of the next are played in 
the four settings already revealed, while 
Act IV, except for the brief street scene 
at the end, passes in the Court of Justice, 
which has been set but unused since the beginning. For the rest, there are 
only two scenes to be provided, the Garden at Belmont and the Avenue to 
Portia’s House, both of which would presumably be set during the one usual 
long intermission of the evening—if indeed the producers thought it neces- 
sary to have these as wholly new backgrounds. 

In short, here is a play demanding, if acted complete, nineteen changes 
of scene (seven or eight individual settings), a play which in other times 
was almost universally shortened, mutilated by the re-arranging or tele- 
scoping of scenes, and slowed in action by long waits for change of setting — 
but now presented practically continuously by means of the turn-table 
stage. 


NOSI¥d W3HL 
NSHOLIN NOH 
AVMHIMY 


abe 


(Arrows indicote cexters of proscenium opening) 


58 STAGE DECORATION 


A second diagram shows how the stage was set for the first series of scenes 
in Faust as produced by Reinhardt. Here there are no fewer than eight 
separate settings that can be brought complete before the audience, on the 
platform level, and this number is increased to ten by two minor scenes 
constructed above others, on the two-decker system. Some of the settings also 
are constructed in such a way that small changes (accomplished easily while 
action is going on elsewhere) alter them into additional scenes, as the Kitchen 
of the Sorceress later becomes the Prison, and Marguerite’s Chamber is later 
Martha’s Chamber. In this case the demands of the play are for even more 
widely divergent types of scene and for greater elasticity than in the case of 
The Merchant of Venice, but the problem has been solved adequately and 
cleverly—and expeditiously. 1 am adding also a sketch by Ernst Stern of 
the revolving stage as set for the wood 
scenes of A Midsummer Nighi’s Dream. 
You will remember that the scenes of Acts 
II and III and the first scene of Act IV are 
played alternately in “a Wood” and “An- 
other Part of the Wood.” What more logi- 
cal or simple than to set a wood literally (a 
simplified one, of course) on the turn- 
table, and then to turn another part to the view of the audience as required? 

I have thus fully illustrated the capabilities of the revolving stage be- 
cause I believe that most people not intimately acquainted with its way of 
working think of it as adequately carrying before the proscenium opening 
three or four rigidly set single scenes, without visualizing its flexibility and 
adaptability when capably handled. 

The disadvantages of the revolving stage are not to be lightly skipped 
over, however. Its demands for additional ground space make it too expen- 
sive a feature for the American commercial theatre, which is obliged by 
competition for “trade” to utilize a site in the most costly section of a large 
city. Moreover, the average speculative American production must be con- 
structed for touring, and no producer in New York dares to design and 
build his settings in such a manner that they will not serve in any of a 
half-hundred theatres in New York and a hundred more scattered from 


i 
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MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 59 


coast to coast; and the setting built for a revolving stage is essentially of a 
special shape and sort, else it has no value. This limitation of the scenery to 
the one stage for which it is first designed also has retarded the adoption of 
the invention in England and increasingly throughout Europe. But while 
expense and considerations of expediency have prevented widespread instal- 
lation of the device (there are only four full-size turn-table stages in 
America, I believe, and many of the outstanding European theatres lack 
them), it is another consideration entirely that seems likely to check further 
use of the invention. That is the growing conviction that the stage to-day 
is over-decorated and over-machined, that any sort of scenery that demands 
such a contraption is a relic of the era of operatic display, that we are all 
coming inevitably either to a somewhat bare architectural stage or at least 
to a unit or skeleton sort of setting. But the man who sticks to realism, and 
wants to present its aspects with a certain degree of visual spread, cannot 
afford to overlook this ingenious and at times marvelously efficient mechani- 
cal servant. 

The other very notable advance in the mechanics of scene-shifting is. to 
be witnessed in the development of stage wagons and wagon stages, or 
sliding stages. While America and the rest of Europe have made experi- 
ments in this field, it is again to Germany that one must turn to examine 
the invention at its best. In many theatres the wagons are just what their 
name implies: small wheeled vehicles on which various sections of the set- 
tings can be fixed, to be rolled into place before the proscenium opening as 
needed, perhaps three or four or half a dozen being there clamped together 
to form a complete scene. This is merely an improvement by which large 
sections of the setting are quickly wheeled into position over the stage floor, 
instead of small sections being carried or slid by hand, laboriously and one 
by one. 

The invention was further developed, however, through various adapta- 
tions of the wagon principle, until the wagon itself became a sliding stage 
as wide as the proscenium opening. In this case a considerable portion of the 
old fixed stage floor disappears, and a moving platform carrying a setting 
slides along tracks parallel to the curtain line into the space before the cur- 
tain, to be slid back to its own side at the end of the act, so that a second 


60 STAGE: DECORACIICIN 


stage, already set, may move into place from the other side. A variation is 
a single sliding stage twice as wide as the proscenium opening, so that while 
one-half is revealed to the audience, the other half is at one side or the other 
of the proscenium arch and being set with the next background. 

The chief drawback to this device is that the whole stage width must be at 
least three times the width of the proscenium opening, to accommodate the 
glorified wagon; and besides there must be at the back enough space to store 
all the settings. Always there is at one side of the proscenium or the other 
the large floorless space into which the stage will slide—dead space. The 


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wagon in either its smaller or larger form has a definite advantage over the 
revolving stage in that there is no reason to cramp the scene, that being the 
temptation of the designer who wishes to get as many complete settings as 
possible on to the turn-table. 

An extraordinary example of the sliding stage is to be found in the Dres- 
den State Theatre. Space was not available for installation of the device on 
the stage level, so that the immense “wagon” or acting floor bearing the 
complete setting (really a section of the stage floor as wide as the pro- 
scenium, with wheels fixed on the under framework) is lowered like a huge 
elevator to a cellar under the theatre before being slid to one side or the 
other. A second stage is then wheeled to the central position and elevated 


MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 61 


to the stage-floor level. As a matter of fact there are two sections in each 
of the two immense stage-wagons, so that if desired only one half of the 
setting need be lowered and slid off. This breaking of the stage wagon (on 
a line parallel with the curtain) also allows variations of acting levels, since 
the two sections may be elevated to different heights; and behind the space 
into which the double wagon-stage rises is a section which is on an elevator 
but without the wagon feature. 


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Secs a 


Certain details of this stage can be understood best by a study of the 
explanatory cross-section shown on page 60. The upper setting 1s shown in 
the stage space as seen by the audience. This setting rests on a wheeled 
wagon, seen below the stage floor level; and reference to the longitudinal 
section on this page will show that the wagon in turn is on a platform which 
can be lifted or sunk by hydraulic elevators. When the wagon Er is low- 
ered, it comes into the position occupied in the first diagram by wagon E2. 
From here it is wheeled by electricity into the position E3 or E4, whichever 


62 STAGE DECORATION 


is unoccupied. It is clear that small stage wagons carrying sections of the 
setting can still be used to expedite the assembling of scenery on the larger 
wagon-stage, as on a fixed stage. 

The longitudinal section indicates how large in such a theatre is the space 
dedicated to stage and stage machinery as compared with the audience space. 
This diagram also indicates the relationship of the setting, as built on the 
double wagon-stage and the elevator stage behind, to the cupola-horizon or 
stage dome. 

A true cupola-horizon, in its theoretically perfect form, is a stage back- 
ground in the shape of a half-dome curving around the playing stage at 
the sides and up over the stage from the back forward toward the proscenium 
wall. Its surface is such that under proper lighting it affords the spectator 
a sense of merely looking into a cushion of air, or into a cloudless sky. Its 
advantage over any other form of background behind the setting is that it 
is perfectly natural (once a powerful recommendation in itself) and at the 
same time wholly unobtrusive. It also permits delicacy and subtlety of 
lighting unknown before its introduction. 

Back in the days of painted landscape backdrops, the = was a minor 
element even in the design of outdoor scenes, unless the artist chose to 
spread himself on cloud effects. But as landscape drops went out of fashion, 
in favor of naturalistic set scenes, the cyclorama drop, a curtain usually 
painted in flat light blue, came into use, and was a mighty improvement. 
When well stretched, without wrinkles, and cunningly lighted, it afforded 
a neutral background, giving the illusion of distance without drawing the 
eye from the foreground, and often achieving atmospheric effects that were 
a distinct aid to the drama. It would wrinkle at times, however, and it 
would shiver in the breeze when someone opened the stage door. Moreover, 
it often could not be hung in such fashion that the old borders or sky-cloths 
could be done away with; it was not high enough to complete the vista at 
the top. 

I think it was Fortuny who first developed the dome idea, in connection 
with the lighting system that bears his name. The material of his half- 
dome was silk stretched tight, because he had discovered that he could ob- 
tain a special quality of light by reflecting it from silk. But later experiment 


MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 63 


proved the value of plaster as a reflecting surface, and practically all the 
more recent developments of the horizon-dome have utilized plaster as 
material. The texture is such that light reflected from it has a beautiful 
effect of liveliness without any sheen or any tangible objective interest. 
The diffused light thus obtained is “atmospheric” in the best sense. The 
background is inconspicuously luminous without being noticeably illumi- 
nated. It is a perfect servant to both the realist seeking naturalness and the 
artist working with suggestive or abstract elements. 

By its slope forward at the top, over part of the stage setting, the dome 
affords the same cushion to the spectator’s eye above as at the back, doing 
away with the necessity for cloth borders. The longitudinal section of the 
Dresden State Theatre shows the curve of the horizont over a large portion 
of the stage area, and illustrates graphically how a spectator in the first 
rows of seats may look upward as far as the proscenium arch will permit 
and see only the neutral plaster surface. The dome here thrusts forward at 
each side only to the front line of the rearmost of the elevator stages. A 
dome on a base describing a full half-circle is usually considered to blanket 
too much of the stage space, unduly hindering the process of setting, and 
it is manifestly impossible with a sliding stage. Therefore in most examples 
the curve is flattened, retaining enough of the thrust forward at each end 
to present the plaster surface to the spectator’s view from what may be 
considered every reasonable standpoint. In some theatres with revolving 
stages the complete half-dome has been built, and at the Volksbiihne in 
Berlin the ends are extended forward on tangents beyond the half-circle. 

Critics of the dome cite as disadvantages the blanketing of much of the 
old flying space, the preventing of direct access to a considerable part of 
the stage, and costliness. These objections have combined to prevent any- 
thing like universal adoption of the feature; although it is a poor theatre 
in Germany that has not some sort of horizont. In America it has remained 
for the little and non-commercial theatres to prove the resources for beauty 
that are in the invention, as the tiny Provincetown Playhouse in New York 
has done, and the Goodman Memorial Theatre in Chicago; and less per- 
fectly, the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York and the Arts and Crafts 
Playhouse in Detroit, with plaster wall backgrounds only slightly curved 


64 STAGE DECORATION 


toward the dome shape. Recently there was invented in Germany a new sort 

of cloth cyclorama which can be unrolled and carried around the stage on 
curved tracks, which is said to give as fine diffusion and quality of light as 
plaster. It is being exploited, together with a special lighting equipment, 
under the name “Ars System,” and it promises a new efficiency in combined 
simplicity and capability for beauty. 

The dome or plaster wall (or perfected cyclorama) made possible what 
is called “projected scenery.” Here an image is thrown on the neutral back- 
ground with an instrument not unlike the old-fashioned “magic lantern,” 
but with all the advantage of modern improvements in quality of light, 
color richness and creative composition. The designer makes merely a 
miniature sketch or negative of the scene, and this is projected on the 
“screen” and serves as an impressionistic background for the action. I do 
not wish to go into detail here regarding the methods by which the image 
is made normal when straight-front projection is impossible, or other tech- 
nical points; for in spite of the admirable simplicity of the device, and a 
beautiful clarity of scene occasionally achieved, it is not in the direct line of 
modern progress—perhaps merely a way of bringing the painter less offen- 
sively into the theatre. The projected picture is likely to be disturbingly 
pictorial and thus out of harmony with the actuality of the actor. I think 
that our lighting experts gained something out of the projecting machine, 
for greater flexibility in abstract and expressive lighting. Along a parallel 
_ line, as a by-product of the invention of his color organ, the instrument by 
which he has all but completed creation of a new art, “mobile ¢ CO 
Thomas Wilfred has developed machines for projecting either pictorial s set- 
tings or colored light, and has achieved tonal qualities beyond what stage 
designers had dreamed possible. 

The use of projected scenery in America has been limited, and Lee Simon- 
son has been most successful of the experimenters, in his work for the Thea- 
tre Guild. In Europe the Germans, who perfected the method, obtained in- 
teresting, and at the time advanced, results, but seem now to have set aside 
the projecting machine except as a minor auxiliary mechanism. 

I have several times mentioned incidentally the great progress made in 
developing more flexible and more sensitive lighting equipment. Only a 


MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 65 


detailed handbook could tell of the successive technical changes during the 
last thirty years, and explain the mechanism by which the extraordinarily 
expressive stage light of to-day is obtained. The increasing tendency to let 
light do the work of “scenery,” however, makes the subject in its broader 
aspects necessarily a part of any essay on stage decoration. 

In the first place it will be noticed that dependence upon light is directly 
in line with the aims of the successive artists who have so changed the prac- 
tice of stage setting. To the naturalists the invention of “truer” lighting, 
in place of the old white glare, made it possible to illumine a scene more 
naturally. Indeed, the arch-naturalist Belasco was the pioneer in America in 
discovering methods which would eliminate footlights and the sort of dis- 
tortion they caused, and border lights that falsely over-emphasized the edges 
of the stage picture. ) 

Then on the long trail of simplification, there was no other medium quite 
so responsive as light. The beauty of light, even of richly colored and varied 
light, is above all a simple beauty. And unity and continuity of lighting 
beauty might almost convince one that there was unity in the play and act- 
ing. If the picture must be made atmospheric, not literal, light was the 
magic for that. As in painting, only a deeper study of light, a finer mastery, 
could bring the appealing, if frail, loveliness of Impressionism. While a 
pillar and a candelabra cunningly placed might correctly suggest the whole 
cathedral in Faust, it was lighting that carried the deeper spiritual intima- 
tion, the emotion of the place. Suggestion, emotional intimation, dramatic 
presence, mood—they all reside in this thing that consciously or sub-con- 
sciously we all react to almost as did those deifiers of light, the Sun-wor- 
shipers. Certainly there is no other God before this one in the scenic studios 
of the modern theatre. 

As candles gave way to oil in the footlights, oil to gas, gas to electricity, 
the gain was in the quantity of light rather than the quality. Indeed, gas 
gave a softer, sweeter light than the first developments of electricity. But 
once enough intensity had been gained—and for years it was far too much— 
the artists turned their attention to widening the range of manipulation, to 
gaining a control which would allow them to have a little or a great deal, 
and to spread it or spot it. The naturalists, as a matter of fact, not only 


66 STAGE DECORATION 


achieved excellent control, but took much of the unnecessary glare out of 
illumination—substituting light as true to life as the nose on your face. 

Flexibility was gained in many ways. First the individual electric bulbs, 
originally yellowish in tone and therefore bringing out certain colors falsely, 
were carried through a series of improvements until the present white bulb 
emerged, in a range of sizes from the smallest up to the 1500-watt lamp.* 
Instead of rows of small bulbs placed almost exclusively in the footlight 
trough and along the borders, the lighting “units” became bewilderingly di- 
versified. Portable lamps, bunches and strips, for flood or spot purposes, were 
added to border lights for general illumination, and the sources of light 
spread from footlight trough and borders to every conceivable hidden posi- 
tion on the stage, and even into hidden boxes before the curtain line—in a 
bulge above the proscenium front, under the balcony railing, in the paneling 
of the auditorium ceiling. The strips became not long rigid rows of small 
bulbs, but articulated groups of half a dozen high-powered lamps, each capa- 
ble of turning individually on the strip axis and each fitted with full color — 
range. The projection machines, too, offer the widest range of types, and 
extraordinary adaptability in each machine. The focusing spotlight of a few 
years back now resides in a hood and behind a lens that makes it a flood 
light or spot at will, for short or long range. Terms like “soft edge spot” 
are in themselves suggestive of the delicate shades of lighting practice. Single 
dimmers and banks of dimmers make it possible to bring up or lower the 
lights singly, in groups or as one battery, instead of switching them on or off, 
or jumping them. Color is no longer a matter of using colored bulbs; instead, 
there are mediums of the right colors on the lamp boxes, to be slid into 
place instantly as required: color filters of glass or gelatine. 

If all these changes seem to be in the mechanics of lighting, it is never- 
theless the quality of illumination that has changed most. Ten years ago, 
when we had just begun to get out of the glare period, and the simplest 
orchestration of light seemed almost a miracle, an Italian named Fortuny 

_ developed for German theatres a lighting system flexible beyond all previous 
dreams, and particularly notable for the quality of the light obtained. For 


* The 3000-watt lamp has been developed for exceptional use, and one even hears ru- 
mors of a 5000-watt bulb. 


MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 67 


several years every progressive theatre wanted a Fortuny system, which was 
in effect a method of throwing light away from the stage scene to have it 
reflected back from silken surfaces that added color and luminosity and 
liveliness to the rays—and diffused them. It is typical of later progress 
that within a few years other theatre artists developed inventions that obtain 
the same lovely quality of light in direct illumination, without the extra step 
of a reflector. 

Footlights, illuminating the under portions of the actor’s nose and chin, 
but obscuring in shadow the more expressive portions of his face, were soon 
suppressed, and in cases abolished. But to-day they have come back to a 
reasonable use, as one instrument in a considerable orchestra—for all artistic 
lighting cannot take Rembrandt as an inspiration, with dramatic floods of 
light played against deep shadows. 

Beyond these general observations on the advance in lighting I do not feel 
it necessary to go. There are methods of lighting semi-transparent curtains 
or gauzes from behind to produce special effects, and methods of painting 
scenery so that it carries two separate pictures, one becoming apparent to 
the audience under one color of light, only to disappear when a different 
colored lamp literally “brings to light” the other picture. 

This same principle applies in that technical method of painting the flats 
called pointillisme. Little points of different colored paints are daubed on to 
the canvas in juxtaposition, in such a way that under blue lighting only the 
blue in the surface definitely comes to life, under red light only red, and 
so on. Beyond the possibility of bringing out or killing certain colors in the 
surface, the method brings the advantages which the Impressionists, Point- 
illists and Divisionists gained in easel painting: freshness of color, an at- 
mospheric liveliness, vibration of light. The system has so many advantages 
over the old flat and generally muddy painting, that when it was first intro- | 
duced to the American stage by Joseph Urban a dozen years ago, it was 
hailed as in itself a revolution of considerable moment. The other progres- 
sive designers incorporated it into their practice, and they still call upon its 
potentialities freely. Gradually, if more tardily, the commercial scenic studios 
adopted it, for better or for worse, where it belonged and where its liveliness 


68 STAGE DECORATION 


was out of place. In some form or other, indeed, “broken color” is almost 
the universal rule, and in general the change is very much for the better. 

One other mechanical or physical change on the stage of the twentieth- 
century theatre deserves brief description, although its importance is as a 
symptom of a greater change coming, rather than as an immediate aid to 
realistic drama. It is the construction of temporary “portals” at the front 
of the stage picture, and the building of various sorts of skeleton settings 
on which varied scenes are constructed by changes of minor elements. 

The portals, doorways standing through- 
out a performance, and used arbitrarily for 
: entries and exits with either indoor or out- 
a r 2*, Waid §~=—- door settings, are a revival of a feature of the 
Wee | = Restoration theatres, where the proscenium. 
, frame was pierced by two permanent door- 
ways giving access to the forestage or apron. 
In the current theatre they may be built into 
a false outer proscenium before the curtain 
line, if the stage has enough apron space, or 
into an inner proscenium inside the curtain 
line. In the latter case a second curtain is 
usually hung just back of the false prosce- 
nium and portals, providing an outer and an 
inner stage, and thus making possible more 
expeditious running through of the scenes. 

Revival of the device is traceable to the experiments made by the Ger- 
mans in an effort to find an adequate stage for the production of Shake- 
speare. As early as 1840, indeed, Immermann’s “Shakespeare Stage” at 
Dusseldorf showed this feature, and there are recurrences down to the early 
years of the current century. Some of us consider this an intermediate step 
between the proscenium-frame stage and a coming wholly formal, non- 
pictorial stage. 

Joseph Urban was probably the first to utilize the specially built portals 


in America. Robert Edmond Jones, Rollo Peters, Norman-Bel Geddes and 


Lee Simonson have used them freely at times, always (it seems to me) 


OE a Ne er ee 


MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 69 


with a gain in the theatrical and dramatic values. The advantage is not only 
in the elimination of disillusioning waits between scenes, but in the audi- 
ence’s sense of being always in the theatre, at the same theatre—as against the 
old system where the scenic designer spent his talent trying to give the spec- 
tator an illusion of being away from a stage and in a succession of real 
places. (A difficult distinction, but at the very heart of modernist theories 
of the theatre.) The standing portals also afford a sub-conscious feeling of 
holding together the action, of continuity, of oneness, a sort of continuous 
physical accompaniment that has its tying-together effect like the accompani- 
ment of appropriate light or music. 

‘In the last analysis, this is a method of formalizing or conventionalizing 
the front portion of the stage, while keeping the up-stage space free for more 
or less realistic manipulation. 

The value of the skeleton setting likewise lies in the double service of 
making possible more rapid changes and carrying through a visual sense 
of oneness. In some cases an actual framework is constructed to remain 
throughout the play. I am adding here a thumbnail sketch by Sheldon K. 
Viele for the New York Theatre Guild’s production of The Cloister, where 
an arcade with three arches permanently separated the front of the stage 
from an inner scene. Other examples of the device are illustrated in the pho- 
tographs of Malvaloca as produced by the Actors’ Theatre and The Love of 
the Three Oranges as produced by the Chicago Opera Company. Claude 
Bragdon’s designs for Hamlet follow the same system with somewhat more 
abstract elements. 

When this process of simplification and conventionalization is carried a 
little farther, we step out of the realistic-representative field altogether, and 
come to the abstract multiple settings that can be used interchangeably for 
any but the most literal slice-of-life plays. But they belong to a theory 
of production which will be discussed when we get nearer to the truly formal 
stages. 


In writing of the period beginning with the naturalistic revolt and ex- 
tending through the efforts of the most talented “practical” decorators to 
mount the current drama with becoming simplicity, unity and harmony, to 


70 STAGE DECORATION 


surround it with an alluring atmosphere and to render its action mechanically 
fluent, I have set up several signposts indicating an approach toward the 
subject of formal stages and abstract settings. In all that I have described 
so far, the setting has been conceived primarily as a@ picture, despite the 
passing of the painter of perspective, and despite the placing of plastic 
objects and the use of flat walls in the picture. Always, too, the artists 
have been seeking reality of place, putting emphasis on the elements that 
indicated the locale of the action. However much they simplified, made 
suggestive, and stylized, they were working with a realistic intent. What they 
simplified was real rooms, gardens or forests, what they suggested was ac- 
tuality, what they stylized was a succession of places outside the theatre. 
The painter, having learned the inadequacy of easel-painting in the theatre, 
was trying other means than painting—but as yet he was not utilizing pri- 
marily the theatre. 

Although I have thus treated together all this matter of bringing ce 
current realistic stage to a pleasant prettiness, in time it was everywhere 
paralleled by experiments with formal stages, with abstract multiple set- 
tings, with anti-realistic devices such as screens and curtains. I have left these 
for later description because I wanted to emphasize the dividing line between 
the two currents of effort. When Craig and Appia gave expression to their 
ideas about simplification and conventionalization, about using €ssentially 
theatric materials instead of those borrowed from other arts, the current 
stage was simply crying aloud for revolution and reform. It was already 
decades behind the other arts in feeling any breath of the modern spirit. 
The greater number of those who heeded the cry of the two leaders, wanted 
more than anything else to make the new ideas “practical.” They were con- 
fused in mind because they saw before them no theatres in which Craig’s 
ideas could be realized im toto immediately. The stage before them was a 
peep-hole realistic stage. They descended upon it and compromised to meet 
its conditions. We have seen how remarkably they dressed it, bettered it, 
largely through those very principles that Craig and Appia had set forth— 
excepting that one central, essential, deeply revolutionary precept that the 
Western world must get back to the stage as stage, the theatre as theatre. 

Here then is the dividing line between the two larger parts of my book. 


MECHANICS AND LIGHTING 71 


In treating twentieth-century stage decoration, one-half—enormously more 
than one-half in actual practice—is seen to fit contentedly into the old 
proscenium-frame theatre, not without extraordinary improvements; the 
other half demands, and experiments with, new forms of stage. 


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VISIONS OF A DIFFERENT THEATRE: 
CRAIG AND APPIA 


T would be idle to think that Gordon Craig single-handed, out of his 

own thoughts and love alone, accomplished a revolution. He was rather 
the figure in which the growing forces of revolt against a tyrannical past 
came together, the prophet who directed a thousand artists toward a dif- 
ferent future. Clear reason and the power of visionary and visual design 
are combined among his attributes in a rare degree. He both saw under- 
standingly and could express himself vigorously, on the stage, in writing, 
in black-and-white design. 

_ There were others before him, however, who guessed the emptiness of 
the current theatre, and particularly the triviality and falsity of stage deco- 
ration when measured by any art standard. Thus Schlegel a full hundred 
years earlier wrote: “Our system of decoration was properly invented for the 
opera, to which in reality it is also best adapted. . . . Among the inevitable 
defects, I reckon the breaking of the lines in the side scenes from every 
point of view except one; the disproportion of the player when he appears 
in the background against objects diminished in perspective; the unfavor- 
able lighting from below and behind; the contrast between the painted and 
the actual lights and shades; the impossibility of narrowing the stage at 
pleasure, so that the inside of a palace and a hut have the same length and 
breadth. The errors which may be avoided are want of simplicity and of 
great and reposeful masses; the overloading of the scene with superfluous 
and distracting objects . . .; an architecture full of mannerism, often alto- 
gether unconnected, nay, even at variance with, possibility . . .” 

Wagner in his time made protest against the lack of unity in the theatre 
and accomplished a sort of reform of the scene, and from Immermann in 
mid-century to Savits in the ’nineties there were other sporadic attacks and 
experiments in Germany. Craig’s own father, the architect E. W. Godwin, 
was among those few in England who foresaw great changes in theatre art 


74 STAGE DECORATION 


and in setting; and in France one finds de Fouquitres writing in 1884 on 
P Art de la Mise en Scéne, and very skeptical about the form of the current 
theatre and the current methods of staging, although he offered no radical 
suggestions for a solution. The larger theatre, indeed, remained untouched 
by any real wave of combined protest and constructive thought until Appia 
and Craig came forward with their books, designs and rare productions in 
the few years on either side of 1900. 

I would like to quote a passage from a book of one of these men and 
say, “here is the starting point of the new movement in the theatre.” But 
they did not express themselves clearly and completely all at once. Their 
ideas grew as they wrote and worked and made designs—although on one 
point they both became clear and explicit very early: the contemporary thea- 
tre was becoming a slave to the realists, its art lacked unity, and contemporary 
staging was generally false and inadequate. 

Nothing but a considerable patchwork of sentences and paragraphs, a 
weaving together of cryptic hints, sudden illuminating phrases and vague 
intimations, can afford the sense of Craig’s vision, and chart even roughly 
the drift of his ideas. But almost any quotation will indicate why he irritated 
some readers, and provoked others into revolt, why he is invariably recog- 
nized as the great stimulating force behind modernist effort. 

One can begin best, perhaps, by quoting again that most-quoted passage 
in which Craig pointed out the lack of true masters of the art of the theatre:* 

“T have many times written that there is only one way to obtain unity in 
the Art of the Theatre. I suppose it is unnecessary to explain why unity 
should be there as in other great arts; I suppose that if offends no one to admit 
that unless unity reigns ‘chaos is come again.” . . . Let me make a list (an 
incomplete one, but it will serve) of the different workers in the theatre. 
When I have made this list I will tell you how many are head-cooks and 
how they assist in the spoiling of the broth. . . . [He then lists the workers, 
from the proprietor, business manager and stage director through the actors 
and actresses, the designer of settings, the designer of costumes, the stage 
crew, etc., etc. | 


* This quotation and those following, except where specially noted, are from Craig’s Ow 
the Art of the Theatre, London, 1911, and Chicago, 1911; this book being an expansion 
of a brochure entitled T'he Art of the Theatre, first published in 1905. 


CRAIG AND APPIA 75 


“Now look carefully at this list. We see seven heads and two very 
influential members. Seven directors instead of one, and nine opinions instead 
of one. 

“Now, then, it is impossible for a work of art ever to be produced where 
more than one brain is permitted to direct; and if works of art are not seen in 
the theatre this one reason is a sufficient one, though there are plenty more. 

“Do you wish to know why there are seven masters instead of one? It is be- 
cause there is no one man in the theatre who is a master in himself, that is 
to say, there is no one man capable of inventing and rehearsing a play: capable 
of designing and superintending the construction of both scenery and cos- 
tume: of writing any necessary music: of inventing such machinery as is 
needed and the lighting that is to be used.” 

It is this statement more than any other one thing that has brought into 
the theatre during the last twenty years that all-powerful, all-seeing artist- 
director: the regisseur who either is himself designer of the stage back- 
ground or imparts to a fellow-artist his conception of the staging and directs 
the execution of every detail. With Craig, of course, there is no question 
of the regisseur and designer being other than one and the same creative 
artist, but in practice there are not half a dozen men living who combine 
even near-mastery in both fields. The idea has worked out in such manner, 
however, that the theatre to-day, whatever its persisting imperfections, is 
organized incomparably better than twenty years ago, for artistic control, 
for coérdinate creation in the several departments of staging under unified 
direction. At any rate, stage decoration is no longer something ordered in 
without supervision from an unrelated scenic studio. 

It is noteworthy that in the passage quoted above, as in so much of 
Craig’s writing, there is that insistence on a complete art, that stressing of 
codrdinate mastery, which must underlie any permanent betterment. Craig 
so many times has been blindly accused of wanting to substitute decoration 
for drama that it is wise to emphasize this completeness of conception. Else- 
where, although he may be as roundabout, as cryptic as ever about the at- 
tributes and methods of the art, he leaves no doubt about this fundamental 
point: 

“The art of the theatre is neither acting nor the play, it is not scene nor 


76 STAGE DECORATION 


dance, but it consists of all the elements of which these things are composed: 
action, which is the very spirit of acting; words, which are the body of the 
play; line and color, which are the very heart of the scene; rhythm, which 
is the very essence of dance. One is no more important than the other, no 
more than one color is more important to a painter than another, or one 
note more important than another to a musician.” 

The conception of a different theatre, however, is shadowed forth best 
from those writings that deal with realism on the stage—that arraign it 
scathingly at times—and with the interpretation of the word “action.” 
Craig insists upon the importance of action as movement—not merely action 
in the story-development sense. He wants visual beauty to characterize the 
production throughout, not in the painter’s way, but by every means that 
is typically and essentially theatrical. He goes back to the definition and 
derivation of the word “theatre” to prove that the theatre is first of all a 
place for seeing. In a footnote on the first page of a book of his designs, 
called Towards a New Theatre, he puts this definition, with its pungent 
afterthought: : 

“THEATRE.—According to Professor Skeat, a French word . . . De- 
rived from the Latin ¢heatrum, derived from the Greek @éarpov , a place 
for seeing shows, derived from the Greek @eaopa, I see... . | 

“Note: Not a word about it being a place for hearing 30,000 words 
babbled out in two hours.” 

In opposition to the theory of realistic illusion he put down this notably 
true observation:* “In what we call Decoration of our theatre . . . there 
would be no attempt to produce what we call ‘theatrical illusion.’ For in- 
stance, we should not paint a tree, or put up an imitation tree so as best 
to copy in color and texture a real tree. No more than in a cathedral they put 
up a wooden copy of the original cross. Doubtless the cross on which the 
Saviour was crucified was an ordinary and rough wooden structure, but when 
it reaches the cathedral it becomes a precious work of art, in no way realistic.” 

It remained for others to elaborate, perhaps to make clear, Craig’s vision 
of a different theatre. At least a whole theory has crystallized around the 


* The Theatre Advancing. London and Boston, 1919. 


CRAG AND APP iA 77 


idea that seems to be at the heart of his writings: that the art of the theatre, 
beyond having that unity which is an attribute of all art, and utilizing to the 
full the values of that action which is its own essential feature, will abandon 
the ideal of an illusion of reality, the ideal of faithful if selective representa- 
tion of something happening naturally; will instead present a show that is 
typically and recognizably theatrical. Certain writers have called it a Pre- 
sentative type of production, as against the representative that imitates na- 
ture, that is based primarily on observation and transcribes photographically. 
The theory is based on the idea that there is a theatrical “form,” some 
quality above and enveloping the materials of the art, movement, voice, 
scene, which can be revealed in the manipulation of the production—some- 
thing as intangible and vital as the “significant form” in painting or essen- 
tially sculptural or architectural form. When this essentially theatric emo- 
tion, growing out of the masterly use of all the resources of the stage, 
grips the spectator, he is not merely looking at a clever or amusing or 
affecting imitation of some real characters and real incidents, but is instead 
on a plane with the gods, where life is intensified, epitomized, clarified. He 
is not led to believe that he is partaking of life as lived, but is conscious 
that he is above life, in a theatre, in a region of theatric imagination. The 
stage is not disguised, lost in a picture. It is frankly and formally a plat- 
form for acting—and the spectator accepts the convention, dismisses the 
commonplacenesses of life, and prepares his mind and emotions for the 
nobility of the theatre. 

Craig, as I say, never so definitely tried to pin down his vision of a new 
art, and he probably would scoff at such terms as “presentative” and “purely 
formal.” He has hidden his ideal behind half-statements and intimations; 
but in the larger view, he started a ball rolling, and as it has gathered mo- 
mentum through the years it has clearly and unmistakably turned down 
the alley of these people who talk about the presentative stage. And to 
understand either Craig’s work or the development of stage decoration from 
here on, you must have a conception of theatre form as such, of the naked 
stage as distinguished from stage pictures, of enjoyment of art within the 
convention set up by the artist as against enjoyment of an illusion of reality. 

In a chapter in which he outlined his method of conceiving and putting 


78 STAGE DECORATION 


down the designs for a production of Macbeth, Craig foreshadowed every 
one of those ideas which gave us the catchwords mentioned some pages back: 
unity, simplicity, suggestion, design and the rest. The following quotations 
are typical of the fullness of his vision: 

«. . . It is the large and sweeping impression produced by means of 
scene and the movement of the figures, which is undoubtedly the most 
valuable means at your disposal. . . . It is idle to talk about the distraction 
of scenery, because the question here is not how to create some distracting 
scenery, but rather how to create a place which harmonizes with the thoughts 
of the poet. . . . Remember that on a sheet of paper which is but two inches 
square you can make a line which seems to tower miles in the air, and you 
can do the same on your oe for it is all a matter of proportion and 
nothing to do with actuality. . 

“Your success will depend upon your capacity to make variations upon 
these two themes; but remember never to let go of the main theme of the 
play when searching for variations in the scene. By means of your scene you 
will be able to mould the movements of the actors, and you must be able 
to increase the impression of your numbers without actually adding another 
man to your forty or fifty. You must not, therefore, waste a single man, 
nor place him in such a position that an inch of him is lost. Therefore the 
place on which he walks must be the most carefully studied part of the 
whole scene. But in telling you not to waste an inch of him I do not therefore 
mean to convey that you must show every inch of him. It is needless to say 
more on this point. By means of suggestion you may bring on the stage a sense 
of all things—the rain, the sun, the wind, the snow, the hail, the intense 
heat—but you will never bring them there by attempting to wrestle and 
close with Nature, in order so that you may seize some of her treasure and lay 
it before the eyes of the multitude. By means of suggestion in movement you 
may translate all the passions and the thoughts of vast numbers of people, 
or by means of the same you can assist your actor to convey the thoughts 
and the emotions of the particular character he impersonates. Actuality, 
accuracy of detail, is useless upon the stage. . . . 

“T let my scenes grow out of not merely the play, but from broad sweeps 
of thought which the play has conjured up in me. . . . We are concerned 


CRAIG AND APPIA 79 


with the heart of this thing, and with loving and understanding it. There- 
fore approach it from all sides, surround it, and do not let yourself be at- 
tracted away by the idea of scene as an end in itself, of costume as an 
end in itself, or of stage management or any of these things, and never 
lose hold of your determination to win through to the secret—the secret 
which lies in the creation of another beauty. . . .” 

Craig’s designs are so clearly examples of his non-realistic, codperative, 
thoughtful attitude, and are so expressive, that I need say little further in 
regard to the seven which are included among my plates. They indicate both 
the way in which he reached forward to abstract means, and his reliance 
upon the values of light. The reader should be reminded that when they 
were first exhibited and published, in many parts of Europe, they were so 
absolutely revolutionary, so unlike anything on the stages of the time, that 
the theatre world found it difficult to take them seriously. They came, of 
course, long before those examples of simplified and stylized realism which 
precede them in this book. At that time Adolphe Appia alone had been dar- 
ing and far-seeing enough to design works comparable to these. 

Appia’s earlier contribution was less to the larger questions of new 
playhouses, new dramas and a different conception of the art of the theatre; 
it more particularly concerned the scene and the actor’s place in it. He wrote 
even before Craig of the inadequacy and falsity of the flat painted setting 
and the methods employed to light it, and of the futility of realism; and he 
also pointed out the values that might be gained through an artist’s manipu- 
lation of the actor’s movements. But chiefly it was in his vision of the possi- 
bilities of light as an expressive medium that he foreshadowed a great part 
of twentieth-century progress in stagecraft. His books were too erudite 
and involved for wide circulation, and too seldom achieved translation from 
language to language; but his beautifully rendered drawings were more 
widely reproduced, and are continuing after thirty years to instruct by 
example. 

In the first place Appia went back to that foundation principle—revolu- 
tionary in 1899—that there must be unity of play, scene and action. The 
current scene, he noted, made such unity impossible. The setting was made 
up of inanimate objects and materials; and the two-dimensional art of the 


80 STAGE DECORATION 


painter, in a tortured form, was wrongly introduced into what should be a 
place of three-dimensional space and light. The scene was dead while the 
actor was living. 

“Tn the theatre,” he wrote,* “we are present at a dramatic action; it is the 
presence of the player in the scene that gives rise to this action; without the 
players there is no action.”” Again he wrote that the actor is “the one essential 
of the mise-en-scéne; it is he that we come to see, it is to him that we look 
for the emotion, and it is this emotion that we have come here to seek. 
Our business then is above all else to lay the foundation of the mise-en-scéne 
in the actuality of the actor, and therefore to clear it of everything that is 
out of keeping with his presence.” 

Determining that the painter should therefore no longer determine the 
conditions of the mise-en-scéne, that a mode of setting should be developed 
that would emphasize the actor above all, that the surroundings must be 
“living” and three-dimensional, Appia turned to light as a medium. The 
current setting was lighted practically flat, like a picture. But Appia foresaw 
that the elements necessary to the background could be subordinated, and 
living light be made to fill the stage, or a living play of light and shadow. 
Be it noted that the mechanical means to this sort of stage lighting were no- 
where available, had not been invented. In his thought and in his designs 
he had jumped twenty years ahead of the progress of the world. 

Appia did not quickly grasp at abstraction as Craig did. He did not make 
use of line, proportion, architectural mass, so freely, for he was not thinking 
in terms of an entirely different stage, in those early years. He contented 
himself with giving atmosphere and depth to the stage, minimizing the 
physical setting as far as then seemed practical, and softening, veiling, 
dramatizing it with light. He succeeded in making his stage primarily sculp- 
tural rather than pictorial—grasping the principle of “the plastic” almost a 
generation before it came to common acceptance—and thus brought to an 
end the conflict between the actor and the scene. 

He used light both as a dramatic medium in itself and as a unifying 
force, binding actor and setting together, and harmonizing both with the 
music—for all his early work was done with reference to Wagnerian drama. 


* Adolphe Appia: Die Musik und die Inscenierung. Munich, 1899. 


Res NP RA 81 


In his drawings, seldom if ever made to indicate a single setting, but al- 
ways in series showing the changing lighting in relation to the action and the 
spiritual progression of the play, he designed the gradations, the composi- 
tion and the projection of the lighting down to the smallest detail. He knew 
just where the face of a given character would come into full illumination, 
and just when a figure would creep into silhouette before just such a quality 
of light. He not only followed the emotion of the play, but heightened it, 
by manipulating the masses of light and shadow, majestically or restfully, 
by playing the action against bursts of light or veils of darkness, by fogging 
one scene mysteriously and making the next glorious with light. 

“We shall seek no longer,” he wrote, “to afford the illusion of a forest, 
but only the illusion of a man in the atmosphere of a forest. . . . And when 
the trees, lightly stirred by the breeze, attract the attention of Siegfried, 
the spectators should see Siegfried bathed in light and living shadows, and 
not some stage ‘cut-outs’ arbitrarily set in movement.” 

Again he commented on the antagonism between paint and light: light 
may be used to make visible a vertical canvas, but that has nothing to do 
with the role of light in its own creative field. “Light is in itself an element 
of unlimited potentialities; used freely, it is for us of the theatre what the 
palette is to the painter; every combination of color is possible to it.” 

Later, Appia in his experiments and in new series of drawings abandoned 
entirely what he had taken from the old stage picture, and experimented 
with architectural masses and steps until he developed a new sort of formal 
stage. The actor’s presence remained his one starting point, but he found a 
new importance in movement and space. The later phase of his work only 
within a very few years has come to the attention of the world; and impor- 
tant as it is proving to be, “light” is the word by which his service to the 
modern theatre is likely to be perpetually recognized. The scene made to live 
in light, light as a binding force, dramatic light, dynamic light, light the 
perfect slave, unifying, clarifying, emotionalizing, light deified. 

The artists who are generally credited with developing the new stage- 
craft practically, the leaders after Craig and Appia, really had this whole 
story before them when they began. If they had understood and believed in 
these two pioneers beyond the desire to compromise, if they had dared to 


82 STAGE DECORATION 


turn away from the realistic theatre, some one of them might have accom- 
plished undiluted what the pioneers dreamed. What these others have gained 
is good enough, perhaps, in a too commonplace world; but let us remember 
that it was Appia and Craig whose ideas were adapted and compromised, 
to improve a thing that interested them not at all—but that seemed to 
most men worth saving. And let us remember that Craig and Appia are 
still the outstanding geniuses among the later radicals, are still working 
shoulder to shoulder with all those who are reaching out uncompromisingly 
toward the true new stage. Nor is there any leader, any basic theorist, to 
place beside them. In treating their work thus at length, I have sketched the 
theories that underlie all the accomplishments with which the rest of this 
book will be concerned. 

Of course the dividing line between the compromise realistic stage and 
the manifestations of the new theory is none too clear. Some things in the 
first half of my book might justly be put in the latter half, and some yet 
to be talked about may have earthly rags about them which should put 
them back with the hosts of the prettified realistic. But in general I shall 
treat from here on matters related to the search for a new stage and a new 
drama, the effort for typically theatrical expressiveness, the reach toward 
the beauties that lie close to abstraction and revealed form. 


VIll 
THE REACH TOWARD ABSTRACT MEANS 


VEN with Craig and Appia, as we have seen, there was no immediate 

formulation of the details of a typically theatric stage. Appia even 
admitted into his newly plastic scene such traces of the old scene-painter’s 
technique as the painted “cut-out” branches of trees, while Craig went 
through periods of designing with differing abstract elements such as cur- 
tains, towering architectural masses, and finally screens. These were im- 
portant as steps, being outside the realistic intent, but they were usually 
experiments in one part of staging—where perhaps a stage itself was needed. 
After the development of a theory of the abstract, these were thrusts toward 
creation of concrete means. 

Curtains particularly have held a fascination for the progressive designer. 
I speak not of the old-time proscenium curtain or of the drop curtain, 
stretched tight, and as likely as not painted with a scene, but rather of cur- 
tains as sheer fabrics hanging in folds. These have taken a large place on the 
formal stages of other times: for instance, on the platforms from which the 
scholastic plays were acted, and the English Elizabethan stage. For the mod- 
ern decorator the impulse toward them came partly from the renaissance 
of interest in the old non-pictorial acting platforms, and partly, no doubt, 
from the contemporary example of Isadora Duncan, who startled the world 
with the beauty of her dancing on the simplest of curtained stages. Her “blue 
curtains,” indeed, are a tradition already. 

The values of curtains either as full background or as a unit are obvious, 
if one has decided to abandon the realistic formula. They are only as posi- 
tive as the designer wishes to make them: disappearing into a neutrality and 
colorless retirement if that is fitting, or coming forward to serve decoratively 
with color, all-over pattern or even an ornamental device, if such con- 
tributive expressiveness is in keeping with the spirit of the play and action. 
The range of beauty and texture is almost unlimited, granted that one has 
made a study of fabrics and colors under lighting, and there is great ab- 
stract value in the arrangement of the folds and major masses. 


84 STAGE DECORATION 


As a medium they fit in with most of the theories of non-representative 
staging: they leave the imagination of the spectator free, they form an 
unobtrusive background that shows forth the actor emphasized, they are 
plastic, they take light effectively and sensitively, as commonly hung they 
are contributive in their natural rhythmic value. In short, they offer a 
simple, harmonious means to abstract decorativeness. 

As used, they have varied from box-like or semi-circular arrangements 
of sheer and plain hangings, to sensuously colored and elaborately lighted 
piles of fabric. On Fuchs’ “relief stage” they were frankly flat backgrounds 
for acting figures, and no more; on Reinhardt’s stage they took on expressive 
color and exotic pattern; with Granville-Barker and Norman Wilkinson they 
carried pictorial scenes decoratively treated, with the folds belying any real- 
istic intention; with Bakst they were additional means to pile up color gor- 
geously, to swell in appealing sensuous line, to complete a painter’s realiza- 
tion of a voluptuous Oriental love-nest. 

Gordon Craig utilized curtains in his early designs and productions, but I 
think usually in connection with architectural constructions. His later work 
almost eliminates them, in favor of more stable, solid and rigid architectural 
pylons and screens. Indeed, it seems that most of the outstanding modern 
designers have gone through a period of utilizing hangings as a mainstay, 
later to find greater potentialities in harder and less effeminate materials. I 
think it was Appia who evolved the theory that the actor needs for contrast 
on the stage not rounded materials but backgrounds in opposition to his 
own roundness (but always three-dimensional like him)—that a very few 
architectural forms in linear and angular arrangement ideally set the action 
out. 

Screens, equally abstract, and with more body, more spine, have proved 
themselves among the most adaptable and satisfactory devices utilized by 
designers who wished to abandon realistic depiction or suggestion but without 
adopting a purely formal or architectural stage. Occasionally the screens have 
served a single play, but usually the designer has experimented with a 
“system,” built rigidly in standardized units and planned for interchange- 
able use with many types of production. 

The screens of a “system” are usually painted in a flat tone or according 


ABSTRACT MEANS 8c 


to one of the broken-color formulas. They have the curtain’s advantages of 
providing a simple and neutral background, emphasizing the actor, and 
offering abstract decorative possibilities; and they are more adaptable, can 
be rearranged in endless combinations, with extraordinarily different emo- 
tional suggestion. The best known system, and father of them all, is that 
designed and patented (with questionable efficacy) by Gordon Craig. At 
one time he considered his portable folding screens, “the thousand scenes in 
one scene,” an answer to many of the questions he had asked about typically 
theatrical staging; but more recently, I think, he has been studying through 
to other stages, considering this an answer only in one type of production. 
The screen device is in wide use, however, on studio stages in both Europe 
and America, and occasionally finds place in the more “regular” theatres. 

The inventor has described the physical features of the system as fol- 
lows:* 

‘The scene is made up usually of four, six, eight, ten or twelve screens; 
and, although sometimes of more than twelve, seldom less than four. Each 
part or leaf of a screen is alike in every particular except breadth, and these 
parts together form a screen, composed of two, four, six, eight or ten leaves. 
These leaves fold either way and are monochrome in tint. The height of all 
these screens is alike. 

“These screens are self-supporting and are made either of a wooden 
frame covered with canvas, or of solid wood. 

“With screens of narrow dimensions curved forms are produced, for large 
rectangular spaces broader leaved screens are used, and for varied and 
broken forms all sizes are employed... . 

“Sometimes certain additions may be made to this scene, such as a flight 
of steps, a window, a bridge, a balcony, and of course the necessary furniture, 
though great care and reserve must be exercised in making these additions 
so as to avoid the ridiculous. 

“This scene is a living thing. In the hands of an artist it is capable of 
all varieties of expression, even as a living voice and a living face are ca- 
pable of every expression. The scene remains always the same, while inces- 
santly changing... . 


* The article from which the quotation is taken is Gnsigned, but appeared in Craig’s im- 
portant journal of the theatre, The Mask. 


86 STAGE DECORATION 


“Through its use we obtain a sense of harmony and a sense of variety 
at the same time. We may be said to have recovered one of the unities of 
the Greek drama without losing any of the variety of the Shakespearean 
drama. We pass from one scene to another without a break of any kind, and 
when the change has come we are not conscious of any disharmony between 
it and that which has passed.” 

The one outstanding production with Craig’s screens was that of Hamlet 
at the Moscow Art Theatre. There seem to have been attained in the per- 
formance a dignity and splendor very unusual, a perfect proportioning of 
parts, and a notable harmony of action and scene. A correspondent of the 
London Times wrote at the time: “Mr. Craig has the singular power of 
carrying the spiritual significance of words and dramatic situations beyond 
the actor to the scene in which he moves. By the simplest means he is able, 
in some mysterious way, to evoke almost any sensation of time or space, the 
scenes even in themselves suggesting variations of human emotions. 

“Take, for example, the Queen’s chamber in the Castle of Elsinore. Like 
all the other scenes, it is simply an arrangement of the screens already 
mentioned. There is nothing which definitely represents a castle, still less 
the locality or the period; and yet no one would hesitate as to its significance 


—and why? Because it is the spiritual symbol of such a room. A symbol, 


moreover, whose form is wholly dependent upon the action which it sur- 
rounds; every line, every space of light and shadow going directly to 
heighten and amplify the significance of that action, and becoming thereby 
something more than its mere setting—a vital and component part no longer 
separable from the whole.” 

In America the basic idea of Craig’s scene was used in “little theatre” 
production by Sam Hume, most notably at the Arts and Crafts Playhouse 
in Detroit. His “adaptable setting” there, consisting of screens, pylons, stairs, 
arches and hangings, has been widely and not too intelligently taken as a 
model by many amateur and semi-professional acting groups. A system of 
this sort, with extraordinary range of possibilities for beauty when manipu- 
lated imaginatively and with taste, is so bare of ornament that it may very 
easily be arranged into commonplace aspects if it be handled insensitively 
and without an understanding of linear and mass composition. In plate 88 I 


ABSTRACT MEANS 87 


am showing one arrangement of the setting on the Detroit stage. With re- 
arrangements of the elements shown here and two additional “units” Hume 
set eleven plays in a single season, with far more than usual fairness to the 
acting and greater intrinsic beauty of scene. 

The so-called “relief stage” was developed by Georg Fuchs for a special 
sort of conventionalized mounting that approached the screen idea. The basic 
theory was that if actors appear to the audience on a shallow stage, as if a 
flat screen and nothing more were behind them, a new decorative value 
could be given to their movements, and a new intimacy could be set up be- 
tween players and audience. The simplification and shallow plasticity in 
staging thus achieved were an asset, and there were times when the sculptur- 
esque movement of the actors—like figures in a sculptured relief-panel— 
seemed to have added a fresh visual appeal in the art of the theatre. The 
actual backgrounds, although they ranged from sheer curtains to such simple 
“suggestive” scenes as those famous ones by Fritz Erler for Faust, always 
threw the actor into prominence, concentrating interest where it indubitably 
belongs. Special attention was paid to the costuming, the movement of the 
actors being considered from the viewpoint of their individual places in a 
shifting pattern of color. With the shallow backgrounds Fuch used perma- 
nent architectural portals in an adjustable proscenium frame. 

The relief-stage resulted in conventionalization and a high visual styliza- 
tion. The sharp silhouetting of the figures, the decorative parade of the 
costumes, the closeness of the actor to the spectator, appealed to many a 
visiting director and artist as the accomplishment of all that Craig had 
hinted at; and although fortunately few designers built stages as cramped 
and shallow as that of Fuchs at the Munich Art Theatre, the principles of 
the relief-stage were absorbed into the art creed of many a German theatre; 
and through Swmurun particularly, they reached England and America. 

Though his individual conception of staging thus came and went as some- 
thing intangibly contributing to the march of progress, rather than as a 
theory persisting in its own complete form, Fuchs is placed by some critics 
as third of the great pioneers, with Craig and Appia. His book, Die Revolu- 
tion des Theaters, was published in 1909 in Germany, and attained wide 
circulation. Even more than in his particular theory of relief staging, per- 


88 STAGE DECORATION 


haps, there was value in his insistence upon a return from photographic imi- 
tation of life to something theatrically shaped. There is a suspicion in my 
mind, indeed, that there is direct opposition between the ideas of theatri- 
calism and of shallow relief: that to use all the physical means of the theatre 
implies more of space and freedom than the relief stage permitted. 


Ix 
THE RECORD BY NATIONS 


F this were more a book of the history of twentieth-century stagecraft, 

instead of an essay at setting forth primarily the various ideas about 
decoration, and their changes, it would be necessary to pause along the way 
to trace the chronological progress of the movement toward re-theatraliza- 
tion in each of the major countries. As it is, I cannot do less than mention 
briefly the main currents of thought and practice in the more important 
centers of progress. Let me begin by going back to the background against 
which the work of Fuchs developed in Germany, and then forward to 
Reinhardt and the other practicing artists; and then to France, Russia, Eng- 
land and America. 

I have already quoted Schlegel’s criticism of the scene in the early nine- 
teenth century. Others in the full current were the architect Schinkel, Im- 
mermann, Tieck, Savits, and finally but differently Brahm. The line of 
thought was through merely destructive criticism of the ridiculously arti- 
ficial perspective scene, to timid efforts at reviving bare stages for Shake- 
speare, and on to the gains made for naturalism. It was the naturalistic 
Brahm who ruled, with a faint counter-voice here and there advocating that 
the reform be turned in the direction of art rather than elaborate imita- 
tion, when Appia brought out his book, Die Musik und die Inscenierung, to 
be followed shortly by Craig with books and exhibitions. From these two 
the modern movement may justly be said to start here as elsewhere, and 
it was in Germany that it first attained the proportions of a true and effective 
revolution. Fuchs was obviously indebted to Craig and Appia, but added 
great impetus to the current. Among the notable practitioners Adolph 
Linnebach of the Dresden State Theatre stands out. For a long period he 
changed his stagecraft with the changes of thought, and contributed not a 
little to the mechanical advance, particularly in lighting. He is the type 
of regisseur that has put Germany’s theatres ahead of all other national 
groups in testing practically the new theories of staging and in building ade- 


gO STAGE DECORATION 


quate theatres, and incidentally in every one of those compromise steps 
which have kept the current drama dressed tastefully and within hailing dis- 
tance of the real radicals. There are perhaps a score of these regisseurs of 
truly creative power in Germany, so that the examples of progress are to be 
witnessed not in the theatres of Berlin alone, but in Munich, Dresden, Wei- 
mar, Cologne, Frankfort and half a dozen other centers. 

For the outside world, however, the progress in stagecraft in Germany 
is bound up with the name of one man, Max Reinhardt. He is the great 
popularizer, the great practical advocate of the newer ideas. It is impossible 
to discover just how much he has contributed in the field of stage decoration, 
because he always has worked with well-known and inventive designers. 
But he has grasped one idea after another and put it into practice. Be- 
ginning with the perfecting of naturalism, he went forward to simplified 
staging of realism, to unified suggestive methods of mounting, to striking 
stylization, to the formal stage in immense circus-theatre productions. And 
to-day, when advanced practical thought has actually caught up with Craig 
and Appia, Reinhardt is presenting his plays on architectural stages of the - 
most approved sort. He has served more than any other one man as a mis- 
sionary of the compromise wing of modernism, teaching England and 
America about new methods and new inventions before the ideas arrived in 
a large way by any other channel, and even finding imitators in conservative 
France. He has over-stylized at times, giving rise to the criticism that the 
new idea was to glorify stagecraft at the expense of the dramatist: he has 
too often overwhelmed the senses at the expense of spiritual and dramatic 
content. But he has staged more acceptably progressive productions than any 
other director. He is a genius in the organization of groups of artists, and 
probably some of the praise that has been his, insofar as stage decoration 
is concerned, should have been passed along to those artists who have worked 
with him, most notably Emil Orlik and Ernst Stern. 

For the rest, completing this three-paragraph summary of Germany’s 
contribution to stagecraft history, there is a group of designers whose 
names have gone abroad as practitioners of solidly appealing settings in sim- 
plified stylized vein: Ludwig Sievert, Knut Strom and Rochus Gliese, Fritz 
Schumacher, one of the earliest experimenters with abstract screen arrange- 


RECORD BY NATIONS QI 


ments, Paul Ott, Alfred Roller, Herman Krehan, Ludwig Kainer, Emil 
Pirchan, of whom we shall hear more in connection with the space stage ideas 
of Jessner, T. C. Pillartz, Ottomar Starke, Karl Walser, Hans Strohbach, 
who reduces one of the most elaborate and expensively equipped stages in the 
world to a simple space stage, Otto Reigbert, and the Austrian Oskar Strnad. 
All of these men can (or could) be counted upon to supply a setting emo- 
tionally appropriate to the play, simple, decoratively attractive, satisfyingly 
colorful. To-day most of them are thinking in terms of space and light, or 
of formal architectural and space stages. With the equally progressive regis- 
seurs with whom they work, they form the most advanced group of wide and 
regular practitioners in the world’s theatres—and they have the most service- 
able equipment of up-to-date stages to work on. 

France has curiously lagged behind Germany and Russia, even behind 
the United States, in adopting progressive methods. The French axiom that 
all important art developments have their beginnings in France, and the 
consequent disinclination to adopt any innovation from foreign sources, 
have militated against acceptance (except in rare individual cases) of the 
ideas of Craig, Appia, Fuchs, Meyerhold and other leaders. The exceptions 
are Jacques Copeau and Louis Jouvet; otherwise there is very little to 
prove to-day that France has profited profoundly by the march of the mod- 
ernist spirit in the theatre. 

Long ago, in the days when Antoine was making history with the Théatre 
Libre, freeing the playwright from encumbering traditions, he also made 
experiments in naturalistic stage setting, even to real stone benches, jets of 
water and similar wonders. There was an incipient counter-revolt in the early 
nineties, in the name of the Symbolists, an attempt to bring an almost ascetic 
simplicity and an aesthetic unity to the stage; and several important painters 
were enlisted by Lugné-Poé for his Théétre d’ Art, afterwards the Théatre 
de POeuvre. But the movement dissipated itself in painters’ experiments, 
although the ideas expressed by some of the participants were in accordance 
with much that later went into the current of twentieth-century progres- 
sivism. The trouble in France all along, one feels, is that the reforms in 
the scene were merely reforms in the methods of painting. The setting was 
simplified, but the designer was practicing decorative painting in place of the 


92 STAGE DECORATION 


old detail painting—when what was needed was to get away from the 
painter’s conception altogether. 

After the experiments of painters as prominent as Maurice Denis and 
Bonnard, under Lugné-Poé and Paul Fort, there was an unaccountably long 
dead period: the very time when the rest of Europe was awakening to the 
importance of the ideas advanced by Appia and Craig. It was not until 1910 
that a new wave of interest set in, when Jacques Rouché, later to become 
director of the conservative Paris Opera, published a book called PArt 
Théatral Moderne, in which he summarized his observations of the staging 
of plays in the theatres of Fuchs, Reinhardt, Stanislavsky and Meyerhold, 
and reviewed at length the books of Craig and Appia. In the same year 
Rouché established the Théatre des Arts in Paris, and prepared, as one 
French writer* put it, “to fix the principles of the new stagecraft in ac- 
cordance with the French genius.” Again a group of painters very important 
and very progressive were called in to collaborate, and again the scene was 
bettered—but remained essentially a painters’ plaything. Even to-day the 
experiments that are most hailed by the art magazines and dramatic journals 
in France are those which are bringing the painters Picasso, Derain, Matisse, 
Laurencin and Braque temporarily to stage work; exceptionally interesting 
individual occasions, and fruitful of important bits, but hardly on the high- 
road to a truly modern theatre. 

Valdo Barbey developed a style of flat background painting which left 
the actors well in relief, counting on the costuming to afford a color pattern; 
Maxime Dethomas and Drésa attempted valiantly to get beyond the paint 
“feel” to something more solid and plastic; Gemier staged some produc- 
tions too obviously derived from Reinhardt; but it has been the artists 
grouped around the exotic Russian Ballet who alone have given Paris real 
thrills over the changes in stagecraft, with painty stuff. 

France enjoyed leadership in the world theatre so long, in the older eras, 
and is so sensitive, so keen, in all that concerns art, that the truly theatrical 
ideal cannot help but make headway there: the ideas of world leaders else- 
where are bound to be absorbed before long. But the delay has puzzled 
many a student of the stage. Two artists alone seem to have carried the 


* Léon Moussinac: /a Décoration T héatrale, Paris, 1922. 


RECORD BY NATIONS 93 


new spirit at its finest into France, Copeau and Jouvet, and of them I shall 
speak at length in connection with the story of the still emerging formal 
stage. 

England must be credited with Gordon Craig’s contribution to modern- 
ism, for after all he was almost literally born on the British stage, played 
on it for years, as child and actor, and in British productions found both 
the entrenched artificiality and stupidity against which he later revolted, 
and the impulse to rebellion. But there is little besides Craig’s beginnings 
to record to the country’s account on the world’s stage decoration ledger. 
Not so much insular as bull-headedly independent, England insisted on 
holding to tradition, giving way to one step after another in reform of cur- 
rent staging years after other countries were experimenting and accomplish- 
ing. Having exiled Craig by disbelief and neglect, London held to the 
realistic and archaeological modes, particularly as they persisted under Beer- 
bohm Tree, until that day when Granville Barker rediscovered Craig’s prin- 
ciples as “made practical”? by Germany and Reinhardt. Barker as regisseur 
drew into his service the two men who have since become, aside from Craig, 
almost the only British artists internationally known as stage decorators: 
Norman Wilkinson and Albert Rutherston. Both remain a little too much 
decorators, rather than designers of stages; but both have done solidly 
simple settings, prettily stylized, and both have given impetus to the rather 
feeble anti-realism current. Charles Ricketts has been less active, but did 
pioneer work, and Lovat Fraser was just breaking into stage designing with 
a jolly sort of conventionalization at the time of his regrettable death. For 
the rest, there were continuous experiments at the Everyman Theatre under 
Norman Macdermott, and at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre under 
Barry V. Jackson; and more important, the researches and rare productions 
of William Poel brought to light many illuminating facts about the Eliza- 
bethan stage. Paul Nash is the only artist whose coming to the theatre in the 
last five years has seemed to promise exceptionally fine accomplishment. The 
story might almost be summed up in Craig, Barker, Nash. 

In this rapid roll-call of the nations and their contributions, I am not 
more than mentioning Russia here, because the very important develop- 
ments in that country have seemed to demand individual treatment as 


94 STAGE DECORATION 


theories or accomplishment in particular fields: the Bakst-Benois-Anisfeld 
development as example of glorified painting on the dance and opera stages; 
Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre as an interesting counter-current 
to theatricalism; Meyerhold as an individual theorist; and Tairoff and 
fellow experimenters as contributors to the stream of Expressionism. It is 
impossible, too, for such a brief essay to mention more than the name of 
H. T. Wijdeveld as leader of a group of theorists who see radically and 
clearly in Holland; or the Capeks and K. H. Hilar in Czecho-Slovakia, al- 
though a student of stagecraft might learn much in a week in Prague; or 
René Moulaert as an accomplished director and decorator in Belgium. Vienna 
is very much an outpost of German progressivism, and one of the foremost 
cities of the world, theatrically considered. Italy has been galvanized into 
consideration of the future of the stage by the startling experiments of a 
group of radicals headed by the father of Futurism, Marinetti, and the 
designers Bragaglia and Prampolini. Of them we shall hear more in con- 
nection with the extreme forms of Expressionism. 

In treating the “new movement” in America, I want to go into a little 
more detail, because this is my own country and the American theatre my 
own field, and this book is a part of what we are trying to do and to make 
clear to each other. Be it said at once, the creative sources of the modern 
theatre, so far as it has developed here, are largely to be sought elsewhere. 
We have creative artists who early absorbed the principles of Craig and 
Appia, and then went forward with admirable independence. But there was 
no figure that measured near the stature of these two, not even a student 
with the perception of William Poel or a mechanic with the genius of a 
Linnebach. It is only within the last five years that there has emerged work 
strikingly original enough to attract the attention of the world, in the 
projects of Geddes and Jones. 

The conjunction of forces that brought about a very flowering of pretty 
stagecraft between 1915 and 1920 was due to the meeting of several im- 
pulses from Europe. Within a year or two of the earlier date, America saw 
the Viennese Joseph Urban introduce simplified and extraordinarily deco- 
rative mounting to the opera in Boston, saw Winthrop Ames import the 
Reinhardt production of Swmurun, saw Granville Barker bring over produc- 


RECORD BY NATIONS 95 


tions with decorations by Norman Wilkinson and Albert Rutherston, saw 
Robert Edmond Jones return to America from study with Reinhardt, saw 
Sam Hume return after working in Gordon Craig’s studio-school in Italy, 
to organize America’s first exhibition of modern stagecraft. Behind the wide 
acceptance of and response to this series of importations, there was a back- 
ground of a great dissatisfaction with the over-commercialization of the 
professional theatre, and a very live interest in non-traditional staging at 
the colleges and universities, expressing itself largely in open-air produc- 
tions and on revived stages, and timidly reaching out to grasp at Craig’s 
ideas as set down in his first book. The earliest little theatres, amateur and 
semi-professional organizations born out of the dual impulses of protest and 
self-expression, were already taking faltering steps toward simplification and 
tastefulness. 

The first burst of activity came in the little theatres, which multiplied 
almost unbelievably in the course of two years. The new stagecraft became 
a passion with the directors and artists of these “outside” theatres, and there 
speedily developed a group of “decorators” with keen sensibility, imagina- 
tion and talent. The Washington Square Players in New York brought to 
the fore Lee Simonson and Rollo Peters, the Los Angeles Little Theatre 
gave Norman-Bel Geddes a chance to prove his exceptional ability, Living- 
ston Platt began to be talked about for his settings at the Toy Theatre in 
Boston, and Raymond Jonson was doing obviously new and appealing things 
on the tiny stage of the Chicago Little Theatre under the tutelage of Maurice 
Browne. At the same time Robert Edmond Jones found his way to the larger 
stage on Broadway, and Urban continued his work for both opera and legiti- 
mate production. On this foundation there developed during the following 
five years a professional group of stage designers who were soon showing 
more creative ability, more vision and more solid knowledge of the art of 
the theatre than were the actors, playwrights or directors with whom they 
worked; and new men were being graduated continually from the little 
theatres. The entry of the United States into the world war closed many 
of the amateur playhouses for a season or two; but it is a sign of the funda- 
mental soundness and strength of the new spirit that the progressive work 
was so soon picked up again without serious loss of impetus. 


96 STAGE DECORATION 


The New York shows were being dressed up in the loveliest of clothes, 
whether they deserved them or not, and the little theatres were staging 
their endless productions with a finish, a daring and a physical appeal that 
ten years earlier would have seemed magic. The thoroughness with which 
the commercial theatre was won over to the simplified stagecraft—though 
without fundamental change in type of play or stage—was in itself an indi- 
cation that the artists concerned were compromising the principles they took 
from Craig, were setting aside the deeper vision several of them had seen 
of an entirely different theatre. As in Europe, in New York the artists ap- 
plied first a process of simplification, then came to simplicity with sugges- 
tion, embraced pictorial design, and finally arrived at stylization—where, 
indeed, most of them pause to-day. | 

In treating this progress in its larger aspects, I have already said that 
the change for the better was remarkable, and the visual prettiness of 
staging in workaday productions immeasurably increased, wherever the new 
spirit was at work; but that the movement as a whole was a compromise. I 
do not want to say more than this for the American group alone. 

What I would like to convey is this: in a theatre creatively dead, com- 
mitted to a tradition of naturalistic staging, the designers stepped in and in 
one department created an independent beauty, at the same time giving 
consideration to the acting and dramatic values insofar as they counted; 
but they were not the uncompromising artists, clinging to their vision and 
ideals in a way that moves worlds. In a “reasonable” conservative view, they 
accomplished a revolution; in a radical view, they made safe and pretty 
something that were better abandoned, seldom more than touching over into 
the field of the living future. 

It may be that I am imposing my own personal judgment too harshly 
here: I have come to a firm belief that ultimately the theatre will abandon 
almost entirely the realistic mode, will develop a stage almost as far from 
the current proscenium-frame peep-hole affair as were the Greek and Eliza- 
bethan platforms; that imitation and finish will give way as ideals, before 
expressive form and emotional intensification; that the theatre must return 
to an identity of its own and not remain a servile if interesting portrayer of 
surface life. You, dear reader, may well discount my opinion, since in the 


RECORD BY NATIONS 97 


immediate view, and as ninety-nine out of a hundred critics and students 
see the case, these artists we have been considering have rescued the stage 
in your town and mine from evils of false artificiality and over-detailed 
photography; have brought it up from a region where incompetence and 
negligence reigned to a place where mechanical efficiency lives, and reason- 
able taste. To do so much, I freely agree, is a considerable feat. 

The men concerned in this upward march are still to be found in two 
groups, the larger consisting of the professional theatre workers, on that 
Broadway which beckons the artist with considerable gold, and with the lure 
of opportunity to display his wares along the most active and gaudiest street 
in the amusement world; and in the little theatres. 

Those who have had most to do with bringing the commercial stage up 
to its present well-dressed standard are the pioneers Joseph Urban, Robert 
Edmond Jones, Norman-Bel Geddes and Lee Simonson, and over as long 
a period but less actively, Rollo Peters, Livingston Platt, Hermann Rosse, 
Claude Bragdon and John Wenger; and more recently Woodman Thomp- 
son, Cleon Throckmorton, James Reynolds, Mordecai Gorelik, Sheldon K. 
Viele, Donald Oenslager, Frederick Jones, Jo Mielziner, Aline Bernstein, 
B. Aronson, Raymond Sovey and Ernest deWeerth. The list would somehow 
seem incomplete without mention of Robert Bergman, whose unique under- 
standing of the technical problems of building and painting has been an 
immeasurable aid to the progressive designers. 

Of the artists working in the little theatres and community theatres out 
through the country, sometimes in a miniature mirroring of the best accom- 
plishment in New York, sometimes with greater daring and more interesting 
results, one cannot mention more than the pioneers Sam Hume and Irving 
Pichel, both traveling close to abstraction and formality in staging; and such 
type figures as Robert R. Sharpe of the. Pasadena Community Playhouse, 
Jonel Jorgelesco of the Boston Repertory Theatre and B. Aronson of the 
Bronx Unser Theater. 

Out of the total group of practicing artists it is difficult to pick indi- 
viduals and say that these are the men who will shape the future of stage 
decoration in America, who will throw off the compromise habit and the 
limitations of realism and aid creatively in shaping the theatre of to-morrow. 


98 STAGE DECORATION 


But it would be a blind spectator who failed to single out Norman-Bel 
Geddes as the possessor of the most vivid imagination in the American pro- 
fessional theatre, unbridled at times but gloriously far-riding at others; or 
Robert Edmond Jones as the most sensitive and thorough-going experi- 
menter in new forms, with a real beauty springing out of everything he 
touches, in traditional or visionary fields. Hermann Rosse has long been 
pushing against the bars set up by custom, and Lee Simonson has been con- 
stantly alert to try out new methods as he has observed them during his 
world-roaming. Then, too, there are the still younger men dreaming non- 
realistic dreams—of whom I can speak only as I have happened to know 
the projects of certain individuals. Among them I feel that Gorelik, Oens- 
lager and Aronson particularly are refusing to be bound to past times or the 
present theatre. But then, America, young, pushing, eager, feverish, experi- 
encing, dreaming, pouring untold wealth and energy into what passes for 
the arts, may thereby turn up who knows what surprises, what glories? 
Already Geddes has startled others beside his own countrymen. 


X 


SQUARING THE NEW STAGING WITH 
EXPRESSIONISM 


XPRESSIONISM in stage decoration and in play production means 

many things to many people (as doubtless does realism), due to the 
common confusion in art terminology. For me Expressionism includes all 
those methods that look to greater intensification of dramatic emotion, to 
greater theatrical expressiveness, as against those that are designed to imi- 
tate life with faithful detail, that give back an interesting representation of 
actuality. When one shapes his decoration with the double object of aiding 
concentration on the theatric reality or dramatic “flow” of the production, 
and of contributing by every physical and visual virtue of the stage to the 
theatrical “form,” then he is being Expressionistic. 

Like the Expressionist painter, who is less interested in the actuality of 
the object than in some essential quality of structural truth he has divined 
in it, and then in expressing his own emotion over that, and finally in 
wrapping all this in some sort of creative “form” that capitalizes and in- 
tensifies all the particular values of paint and canvas; so the new stage 
director or designer tries to foster an inner truth or quality or rhythm that 
is in the poet’s script, by emotional rather than imitative means, and by 
utilizing those special things that belong to the stage. The painter no longer 
tries to hide the paint-and-canvas look in order to make his picture more 
like a photograph. He declares the flatness of his canvas and glories in the 
paint as such. So the clear-sighted worker in the modern theatre will come 
more and more to declare his theatre: he will not hide the acting platform 
behind a curtain in order to flash into sudden view a true surface picture 
of an actual place, but will develop his stage formally and decoratively, nurs- 
ing its essentially theatric virtues. 

Expressionism in this sense covers all that is being accomplished in the 
march toward abstraction in setting, toward formal stages and space stages; 
it finds its great pioneers, so far as the theatre is concerned, in Appia and 


100 STAGE DECORATION 


Craig; it extends through the experiments of a dozen world figures into 
regions still too speculative and dim for us ordinary mortals to follow. 

But what people too often mean when they exclaim, “I don’t like Ex- 
pressionist scenery,” is that they have seen plays staged before Expres- 
sionist paintings—and the obvious inappropriateness set their teeth on edge, 
just as it does yours and mine. It is probably true that nine-tenths of all 
the productions which were reported as experiments in mounting plays Ex- 
pressionistically between 1915 and 1925 were examples of more or less un- 
realistic dramas (mostly old plays written before the reign of realism) 
placed in settings that were merely transferences of the mannerisms of 
radical painting. Expressionistic painting has no more place on the stage 
than has Impressionistic or naturalistic, or the old muddy nineteenth-century 
sort that even the easel painters could give no adequately descriptive name. 

There were many and widely discussed examples of the “new art” thus 
brought to the stage around 1920, chiefly in Russia and Germany—although 
America too had its timid pioneers.* Finally the film called The Cabinet of 
Dr. Caligari took the fame of Expressionism as a mode of setting around 
the world. It was a marvelous technical achievement, and in most of its 
scenes it harmonized actor and background effectively. But the settings, - 
with deformity of nature emphasized largely by means of paint on canvas, 
were adequate to the brief and swiftly changing scenes of the moving pic- 
ture where they would only prove over-stimulating, eccentric and irritating 
when set before an audience for an entire act of a play. The mode there 
employed was in its own place direct, expressive, convincing; but the de- 
signers for the legitimate stage who grasped the outward trick of the manner 
gave us only startling and immediately effective things where quietly ex- 
pressive and soundly theatric things were needed. Artists who had left the 
older sorts of painted setting safely behind years before, suddenly gave way 
to the impulse to try on a new style in painting. It was as if one might try _ 
to make one’s old buggy or one’s new automobile more modern by tracing a 
cubistic design or copying an Expressionistic scene on the outside of it. Ex- 
pressionism really must begin with the innards. 

It should be remembered here that although the men who had simplified 


* See Kenneth Macgowan’s The Theatre of Tomorrow, New York, 1921, Chapter VIII. 


EXPRESSIONISM IOI 


and stylized the current realistic setting had learned that a too close adher- 
ence to nature was disillusioning, that an extremely lifelike representation 
drew too much attention to itself on account of the very perfection of the 
imitation, nevertheless they did not so drastically simplify or so ruthlessly 
reshape nature that the scene might not seem reasonably like a bit taken out 
of real life somewhere. While avoiding the danger of reproducing life too 
accurately, they likewise avoided violating nature as seen by the so-called 
normal eye. One of the first freedoms claimed by the Expressionists had to 
do with this limitation. They claimed the right to violate, deform and re- 
shape outward nature just as far as such violence furthered emotional ex- 
pressiveness. Distortion became a rule of the first Expressionist painters and 
earmarked the whole movement as decadent in the minds of all those who 
consider fidelity of imitation the first test of art. And it is distortion, or 
perhaps “‘detachment”—not of the painter’s kind—that most clearly out- 
wardly marks Expressionistic work in the theatre. 

In stage decoration (“decoration” has become a very unserviceable word 
here) it may be that the designer throws over allegiance to natural aspect 
in order to gain expressiveness through rearrangements of motifs out of 
nature, or through abstract manipulation of line, mass and color in the sur- 
rounding walls of a setting; or it may be that he transfers the play out 
of any mounting in built-up backgrounds to a formal stage, a platform 
that remains permanently and confessedly an acting platform and not a 
framework for picture scenes; or perhaps he aims at the nearest achievable 
approximation to a toe-hold in absolute space. But detachment from nature 
is at the bottom of all these methods. 

Despite my own belief in our ultimate arrival at the formal stage or a 
space stage, I cannot hurdle all the attempts to apply the principles of 
modernism to the surface setting, to flat surrounding backgrounds for stage 
action. My illustrations include experiments in grasping the principles of 
abstract graphic art and adapting them to scene making. The setting for 
The Makropoulos Secret as worked out for the Pasadena Community Play- 
house by Robert R. Sharpe seems quite clearly to have been inspired by that 
same wing of the German Expressionist painters to which the collaborators 


102 STAGE DECORATION 


on Dr. Caligari made their bow. Asa matter of record I include also a scene 
from the Caligari film (plate 92). 

Another group of modernists brought a different mode of painting to the 
theatre, and almost convinced even the most uncompromising formalists that 
it belonged by right there. Those artists who reacted from realism in the 
direction of a child-like or primitive naiveté, contributed particularly to the 
staging of the Russian and Swedish Ballets in Paris, and to the famous 
Soirées de Paris in 1924. In some measure the simplicity and clarity of 
this type of painted setting may be considered a reaction from the hot in- © 
tensity and elaboration of the earlier ballet setting under the influence of 
Bakst; but the greater reason is in the fact that Derain, Matisse, Picasso, 
Dufy, and others of those called upon, were artists who had been nurtured 
on Primitivism and had come to an engaging and decorative simplicity in 
their painting, and when faced with a theatrical problem that could be met 
with painted curtains in similar vein, their response was a sort of enlarged 
naive easel picture. In some cases the mode was perfectly in place, and the 
audiences enjoyed individual exhibitions of extraordinary charm and other- 
worldliness. But as a contribution to progress in stagecraft, these widely 
heralded experiments, though brought forth by the most talented group of 
painters in the world to-day, hardly touched more than the fringe of the 
problem. 

Derain’s curtains for la Boutique Fantasque were typical examples, with a 
Rousseau-like fancy given full play; and Jean Hugo’s Roméo et Juliette 
ballet setting was as simple as an unspoiled child might make it. The same 
note was apparent in the works contributed by Matisse, Gontcharova, Fou- 
jita, Picasso, Larionoff, Leger and Dufy. The settings of all these show the 
true Expressionist disregard for nature “as is.” 

Sur-réalism seems to me a matter of surface Expressionism, however 
deep down in their beings the artists find their inspiration, and it is not 
likely to affect staging profoundly unless the principles are applied primarily 
to the conception of the play. So too the systems of those painters who design 
in total abstraction, with pattern-pictures of undeniable if puzzling appeal. 
Their stage backgrounds, as worked out for instance by the Bauhaus group 
in Dessau, have elemental simplicity and precise formal qualities, but ap- 


EXPRESSIONISM 103 


parently not in particular a dramatic value as background to the moving 
actor. 

The Italians have recently been very active in the search for new scenic 
equivalents. The Futurist group, always devoted to the machine, looking 
to it for inspiration and utilizing its characteristics in design, have invaded 
the stage and have tried out abstract and mechanistic methods. Before them, 
perhaps, Achille Ricciardi conceived of a color accompaniment for setting 
as an expressional aid to drama, following the action with a changing pattern 
of colored light, a shade for every nuance of emotion, time or place. He 
here touched on a truth in the understanding of which we are, perhaps, 
Vveriest amateurs. But any such over-use of change in lighting as he evi- 
dently indulged in could hardly avoid being intrusive. Abstraction pursued 
in that direction may yield up other glories which we have but half imagined, ° 
as an independent art like Thomas Wilfred’s “mobile color”; but that im- 
plies a “theatre” of a distinctive sort with little relation to the great tradi- 
tion of acted drama.* Anton Giuglio Bragaglia would, if I understand his 
object, follow out Craig’s ideas of movement and theatricality on stages 
such as we have known, but with a new machine-age glorification of scenic 
elements. He writes:f “With us the prose theatre is less interesting than 
the musical theatre, as the former has become all representation with very 
little of the spectacle. In Italy, particularly, the theatre of the great tradition 
is essentially and vividly spectacular. . . . The future playwrights will be 
able to do. something when furnished with original scenic mediums for 
constructive creations. That is to say when the stage is mated with the 
movie art. Mechanical scenery, mysterious and powerful muse, can alone 
inspire new methods of spectacles, characteristic of our own modern times. 
—And machinery will not betray poetry. On the contrary! With modern 
rhythms, poetry will sing vivid, miraculous apparitions of the scenic prism 
of the ten faces. Life, varied in its myriads of pictures will then and only 
then be presented in the simultaneous synthesis of its panorama. . . . Mod- 


* I have found no translation of Ricciardi’s book, I/ teatro del Colore. 'The reader inter- 
ested in “mobile color” will find a chapter on the subject, with illustrations, in my book, A 
Primer of Modern Art, New York, 1924. 

+ “The Theatrical Theatre,” in The Little Review, winter number, 1926. 


104 STAGE DECORATION 


ern reform intends to return to theatrical machinery its ancient prestige, 
which procured so many successes, triwmphs and glories for the genial and 
ingenious work of our scenic artists.” 

I confess to being a little vague about the concrete means intended by 
Bragaglia; and the photographs I have seen of his settings indicate merely 
a plastic practice within the starkly simplified picture stage, with more than 
usual leaning toward abstract composition in line and volume. But perhaps 
it is only because he is forced to associate with old-fashioned literary play- 
wrights, there being no Futurist ones worthy the name, that he fails to 
transform the stage with new spectacular glories of the machine age. 

Enrico Prampolini, of the same group of Italian radicals, goes one step 
farther, and pins his faith to “scenic dynamism” and to “space as a scenic 
personality dominating theatrical action”; and he finally arrives at the 
“Polyexpressive and Magnetic Theatre,” a theatre without actors and with- 
out a stage. When he still utilized a stage, his designs were not unlike those 
of the surface abstractionists. Even then they were more interesting as steps 
toward a “theatre of mechanics” than as contributions to the solution of 
contemporary dramatic problems. Some of his statements, however (in the 
same issue of the Little Review), are arresting and provocative of thought: 

“With the abolition of the stage and the ‘scenic-arc’ the technical possi- 
bilities of theatrical action find broader scope outside the three-dimensional 
terms of tradition. By dividing the horizontal surface by new vertical oblique 
and polydimensional elements, by forcing the cubic resistance of the 
‘scenic-arc’ by the spheric expansion of plastic planes moving rhythmically in 
space, we arrive at the creation of a polydimensional and futuristic scenic 


SPGCE.. os. s 
“T consider the actor a useless element in theatrical action and moreover 
one that is dangerous to the future of the theatre. . . . We are tired 


of seeing this grotesque rag of humanity agitating itself futilely under 
the vast dome of the stage in an effort to stimulate its own emotions. The 
appearance of the human element on the stage, destroys the mystery of 
the beyond, which must rule in the theatre, a temple of spiritual abstrac- 
CION. 5 ae 

“From painting, sceno-synthesis, to plastic, sceno-plastic, from this to the 


EXPRESSIONISM 105 


architecture of plastic planes in movement, sceno-dynamic. From the tradi- 
tional three dimensional scene to the creation of polydimensional scenic- 
space, from the human actor to the new scenic personality of space, the 
actor, from this to the polyexpressive magnetic theatre; which I see already 
outlined architectonically in the center of a valley of spiral terraces, dynamic 
hills on which rise bold constructions of polydimensional scenic-space, center 
of irradiation of the futuristic atmospheric scenery.” 

However interested we may be in plastic values per se and in scenic 
imagination, we seem here to have got beyond stage decoration in the sense 
in which I chose the term for the title of this book. I am frankly writing 
about changes in the platform for acting, and I therefore leave further 
pursuit of Prampolini’s soaring ideas to those who are prepared to abandon 
the actor and to transform the stage into a super-human performing machine 
among the “dynamic hills.” I likewise somewhat reluctantly omit the sweep- 
ingly new conceptions of Frederick Kiesler for the optophonic theatre and 
for stages swimming in space. 

There have been many attempts to capitalize the values of moving scen- 
ery, but in the sort of theatre we are holding to, it seems to me that move- 
ment in the settings, however carefully designed to be in keeping, cannot 
prove other than an interruption of the spectator’s preoccupation with the 
dramatic story, other than a distraction. I am open to conviction—but I have 
never seen it work out in practice or experiment, and I cannot visualize it. 
Stillness seems to me a vital element of setting, as it does of noble architec- 
ture. But when scenery becomes the chief actor, then I shall withdraw my 
objection. 

Vesvolod Meyerhold has led the sanely insurgent forces in the Russian 
theatre, and I think that the stability of his position has been due largely 
to the fact that he always held, in his theories and his experiments, to the 
importance of the actor in the performance as seen by an audience. He was 
once a worker with Stanislavsky and Nemirovitch-Danchenko at the Moscow 
Art Theatre, but he early differed with them about the conservative methods 
of stage setting at that most important playhouse. Stanislavsky throughout 
his career has seen further intensification of the actor’s expressiveness as the 
chief aim of “art theatre” technique. His company, probably the most 


106 STAGE DECORATION 


remarkable acting machine in the world during the height of the realistic 
era, went beyond imitative playing, reaching a style and an achievement 
sometimes termed a “spiritualized realism.” Without attempting a difficult 
analysis here, I may say that in a sense they went through and beyond 
realism to a psychologically true region where there was much of that clarity, 
emotional directness and expressiveness which the radicals are attempting to 
attain by throwing aside imitative methods—instead of reaching through 
them to something approaching imitation of the soul. In the matter of set- 
tings, however, the Moscow Art Theatre, except in the very rare instances of 
a Blue Bird or a Hamlet in Craig’s screens, was content with the contem- 
porary fashion. Even when the theatre became a world-famous model of 
progressiveness in acting, its stage decoration remained in general old- 
fashioned and not even the best of the traditional kind. This devotion to 
the old stuff hardly constituted a serious counter-current to modernism—as, 
for instance, did the Bakst pursuit of the glorified painty setting—for it 
was not followed with any particular conviction. Stanislavsky, to be sure, 
came nearer to revealing the soul of man in acting than any previous direc- 
tor, but he saw no inappropriateness in building his settings of the sort of 
meaningless details that he had instinctively dropped from his playing— 
and Meyerhold, most clear-sighted of all Russian theorists about stage set- 
ting, seceded from the Art Theatre company. 

Meyerhold held to acting as the most important element of production, 
but he went about emphasizing it on the stage by throwing over all allegiance 
to naturalness in the setting. He wanted above all else to bring the actors 
before the audience disembarrassed of casual nature. It was in connection 
with his experiments that the first wave of discussion about “the theatre 
theatrical” broke over the critical world. At first, after leaving the Art 
Theatre, he developed the idea of the relief stage—bringing his actors for- 
ward. From this he conceived some notion of further tying together the 
actors and the audience, partially by decoration (or the form of the stage) 
and lights. He soon did away with the proscenium curtain, and relegated to 
a small area at the back of the stage such changes in the suggestion of 
reality as still seemed necessary. He even kept the auditorium lights up — 
during the performance in an effort to make the spectators feel that they 


EXPRESSIONISM 107 


were part of the life of the theatre, rather than merely paid entrants at 
the photographic exhibition of a bit out of natural life. 

Later Meyerhold not only abandoned the curtain but eliminated the pro- 
scenium arch. His stage became literally and nakedly a platform for acting; 
or rather a series of platforms, because he found diversified movement such 
an effective medium. Finally he became one of the originators of the Con- 
structivist setting. 

I have thus treated Meyerhold’s progress somewhat at length because 
he, more steadily in practice and more sanely in theory than any other 
worker, developed the ideas inherent in the writings of Craig and Appia 
from mere revolt against realistic methods to creation of wholly Expres- 
sionistic methods. He is the key figure with whom we turn to the last divi- 
sion of my subject: the stage in space as distinguished from the setting con- 
ceived as three walls of background. 


XI 
THE MODERN STAGES 


N taking up consideration of the most readily recognized of the typically 

theatrical stages, as developed by the modern experimentalists, it is well 
to remind the reader of the excursion made in my opening pages into the 
subject of general theories of theatre art, and to repeat that only an under- 
standing of the agitation for a presentational type of drama, as against the 
representational, can explain the contemporary swing toward the declared 
stage and the purely functional setting. In taking three types of stage for 
particular study—or perhaps, more properly speaking, in trying to crowd 
what seem to me the truly theatrical or expressive stages into a classification 
of three sorts—I am being entirely arbitrary. 

We have here come to a new way of thinking of the stage and its “deco- 
ration”: the conception of stage as space—something for the actor to walk 
on beneath, to be sure, a floor or platforms or skeleton constructions, but 
more important, the central acting space emphasized instead of the walls 
or background surrounding that space. We have reached here the truly and 
consistently plastic and tri-dimensional Expressionistic thing, with more than 
a vague reach toward fourth-dimensional values. 

Of all the theatres designed or manipulated to bring the acting space up 
and forward into view, to disengage from surrounding life a bit of frankly 
theatrical playing space, there seem to me three type sorts: (1) the naked, 
outstanding carpentered stage, commonly called the “formal stage”; (2) 
the “space stage,” which minimizes the architecture or carpentry, and at- 
tempts to arrive as close as possible to a lighted void; and (3) the Con- 
structivist stage, with a skeleton construction in space, designed purely 
functionally for each new play. The boundaries between these types must 
be considered very elastic, to be pulled over at times so that certain ex- 
amples cut into two fields. And yet the three sorts are emerging clearly 
enough to afford a basis for description and discussion. 

The likenesses, the characteristics that warrant grouping the three sorts 


IIO STAGE DECORATION 


together, that mark them as coérdinate phases, are these: all three are out- 
growths of the search for a stage emphasizing the actor and action above all 
else. This marks them off from the older stage where the picture shared 
interest with the acting; and, in the other direction, from the machine-age 
theatres of Kiesler and Prampolini, where the actor and the playing space 
disappear amid moving constructions. All three are not only anti-photo- 
graphic but anti-pictorial, gaining their decorative values not from a framed 
and arranged composition in the flat, but primarily out of movement and 
light, and in one division, out of permanent architectural elements. They 
all are entirely negligent of the representative visual values, have no fa- 
cilities for a faithful reproduction of natural scenes. (The vague intimation 
of real places, the suggestion of locale, is not only possible but usual, absolute 
isolation from life, like absolute abstraction, being probably impossible and 
certainly undesirable with the types of drama we now know.) In all three 
stages the curtain either is eliminated or has become a mere occasional con- 
venience: for changes of backgrounds and accessories are minimized, and 
there is seldom occasion to blot out one picture suddenly or to reveal an- 
other with the element of surprise—the essential stage or shaped void is 
always undisguisedly before the audience. All three rely on light, on atmos- 
pheric quality and color and light-and-shade composition, as a major re- 
source for dramatic effect. 

The unlikenesses, the differences that characterize each type, are these: 
the formal stage is a playing space determined by a permanent architectural 
platform, a carpentered platform standing out naked. This platform some- 
times joins a wall at the back, and sometimes walls at the sides, but these 
walls, if present, are in their main elements unchangeable and immovable— 
not decorations. There is no proscenium arch and only a supplementary cur- 
tain part way up-stage, if any. The stage, always before the audience and 
therefore a permanent reminder of the theatre as theatre, may have noble 
decorative value in its physical form, like any other architectural composi- 
tion; but its range of decorative variation is limited to a non-imitative 
sort. 

The space stage, on the other hand, puts forward no declared platform. 
Its floor, indeed, is usually the same stage floor that the older theatre has 


THE MODERN STAGES III 


known for a quarter of a century past, and the stage box the same barn-like 
place of old (though unseen), with proscenium arch as often as not still in 
place on the audience side. What links this physical stage with the modern- 
ist types is its use, not as an area surrounded with decorations but as a 
shaped volume of space, with surroundings suppressed as far as possible 
to afford the impression of a void, into which the action is placed and picked 
out with light. Since background cannot always be pushed back into dead 
darkness, the space is ordinarily surrounded by the most retiring materials: 
black curtains, or a cyclorama or dome from which direct lighting is care- 
fully excluded. In this box full of space a spot in the center, on the flat 
floor or on successive platforms or tilted planes, is lighted—with perhaps 
an upright line or a column showing as an anchor in reality. Living light and 
movement are the basic elements of decoration. 

The Constructivist stage differs from the space stage in being essentially 
a structure in space rather than an emphasized void. It differs from the 
formal stage in that there is no formal platform for acting, but a fresh 
construction designed to meet the needs of each play. This is, in effect, a 
skeleton erected in a space stage, an arranged patchwork of stripped stairs, 
arches, ramps, platforms, ladders, etc. There is nothing in a true Construc- 
tivist setting that is not specifically called for by the acting directions, no 
element that has not a definite function in utilitarian service to the players, 
or as scaffolding holding those elements together. The utter Constructi- 
vists, moreover, are consciously “anti-decorative,” insisting that any shap- 
ing of the construction for aesthetic values is a betrayal of the theatrical 
values. 


XII 
Pe ARCHITECTURAL STAGE 


HE formal standing-out stage, the architecturally pleasing platform 

for acting, pushed up and forward into easy view of the audience, 
disembarrassed of the proscenium arch and its encumbering machinery, 
seems the most logical and most direct answer to the cry for more intense 
capitalization of the means that belong typically to the theatre as an art. 
It is the true answer to the call for a plastic stage in harmony with the plastic 
actor, for it is always and wholly “in the round.” 

This platform was in other days the setting for all drama. In Greece, 
in mediaeval Europe, in Elizabethan England, in old and modern Asia, 
it has been the scene during the greatest flowerings of dramatic art. In 
bringing it into the theatre again—or rather in shaping a new theatre about 
its essential form—the modernists are breaking with one tradition only to 
revive another which is older and more noble. But they also bring resources 
to make the revived platform more usable for acting, more flexible, more 
susceptible to decorative nuances. 

In Greece its decorative value was in the architectural background, the 
noble skene and paraskenia. In Rome, one feels, these walls were too deco- 
rative in the surface sense, too ornamental: the use, acting, was being for- 
gotten in the desire for display. The Elizabethan stage was nearer naked 
construction; and probably vaguely pleasing as background. The modern 
formal stage has all the possibilities of these others, and very many more, 
because its architectural values, without losing their serenity and unobtru- 
sive decorativeness, can be heightened and made to contribute to perform- 
ance values by the quiet marvels of modern lighting. 

The first reason for this type of theatre, however, is that the audiences, if 
the director’s non-realistic intent is made clear through the frank formalism 
of the playing space, will accept the convention of one stage remaining 
throughout the many scenes of a play, throughout many plays; that a 
declared platform for acting, obviously without means for changing its own 


II4 STAGE DECORATION 


character, without facilities for picturing many places in nature, will not 
be expected by the audience so to change, or to give back a view of natural 
surroundings. Instead the imagination of the spectator will supply new back- 
grounds insofar as needed. The theory even goes farther: it says—with 
profound truth, I believe—that in freeing the audience-mind from picture- 
recognition, one concentrates interest on the playing and the play; that 
making the setting almost wholly unreal, one intensifies the reality of that 
inner core of drama that speaks to the soul. 

The practical advantages of a scene in which the main elements remain 
unchanged are too obvious to bear discussion, particularly in view of the 
vast amount of energy and inventiveness expended since 1890 in developing 
machinery to accomplish changes of setting expeditiously. No amount of 
perfectly functioning machinery can make possible the swiftness of scene 
succession, and the consequent sense of unified action, that comes with the 
adoption of the formal stage and the convention of one architectural scene 
standing for all scenes in nature. A second practical gain is the extraordinary 
freedom for movement, the increased decorative possibilities of the group 
action on a stage disentangled from the former picture accessories. 

One may fairly ask how far the director, granted that he wants this 
general nudity, can wisely fall back on the suggestion of locale in individual 
scenes. Great variety of atmosphere is possible through the new flexibility of 
lighting alone. Changes in color, architectural emphasis, and even in the 
apparent shape of the stage, can thus be compassed. Beyond that, a very few 
properties, a screen or two, minor hangings, adaptable panels, are com- 
monly utilized for indications of called-for places. If the artist can retain 
the sense of the stage and at the same time afford an intimation of a particular 
scene, or a formal conventionalization of its essential character as it might 
be imagined by an artist uninterested in actuality, that may be the happiest 
solution. Roger Fry, writing of a stage designer, once spoke of the “power 
of using form and color with a double meaning, first as pure design, and 
secondly as a means of evoking vague suggestions and flavors of time and 
place.” Certainly if the designer can preserve the abstract values of his 
formal stage, and at the same time “evoke vague suggestions and flavors,” 
he will have kept a just balance of convention and intimated reality. 


Pitt ev Cll BOLURAI SAGE II5 


For examples of modern formal stages actually built, one must go back 
to Jacques Copeaw’s Théatre du Vieux Colombier in Paris, an architectural 
arrangement based on Elizabethan models, as the most famous; and to the 
shaped stages that Norman-Bel Geddes has designed for certain produced 
plays like Jehanne d?Arc and Arabesque, supplemented by models for un- 
produced plays like Dante and The Mother of Christ, which I shall call 
“sculptured stages”; and to Reinhardt’s almost bare platforms on which he 
has used screens so freely. The truth is that there have been no examples of 
permanent formal stages built ideally, as the designers would desire them 
if unembarrassed by questions of money and expediency. Copeau’s theatre 
was the best that he could crowd into a cramped and uncompromising hall 
(and the similar Marais Theatre in Brussels and the Elizabethan Madder- 
market Theatre in England were rearranged from older stages), whereas 
Reinhardt continues to divide his time between proscenium-frame commer- 
cial theatres and temporary erections at Salzburg and the compromise ball- 
room theatre at Vienna. 

Even in its non-ideal form, the stage of the Viewx Colombier has proved 
over a period of years the nearest to a perfectly responsive non-naturalistic 
platform for acting that the modern Western world has seen. The physical 
characteristics are indicated in the “opened” drawing by Louis Jouvet (plate 
97) much more accurately than I could describe them. Particularly to be 
noted are the fore-stage, the steps to the higher stage, the permanent char- 
acter of this main concrete platform, the permanent doors at stage-right, 
the rear wall with its built-in balcony. In the picture of the stage as set for a 
production, plate 98, the lanterns used for lighting are shown; and properly 
they are not disguised—as part of the theatre, they are built into the com- 
position and are frankly declared as integral to it. 

Copeau and Louis Jouvet, the very talented and clear-sighted actor-de- 
signer who worked with him, manipulated this stage with the slightest of 
changes and additions for the production of an amazingly wide repertory of 
plays. The illustrations indicate how little was added to dress the scene for 
any given production. A screen here, an outstanding property there, or a 
change of a panel or two on the wall, constituted the extent of the “decora- 
tion,” even though the range of the drama covered practically every type 


116 STAGE DECORATION 


of play in and out of the realistic field. Through it all the main features 
of the stage remained the same: the playing space was always forward and 
there was never any vista or decorative display beyond it to draw the atten- 
tion away. [he neutral stage played up constantly to the actor and the flow 
of action. It admirably fulfilled Copeau’s expectations in that it provided a 
“site” for the action instead of a décor. It gave him “atmosphere” and 
“evocation.” 

I may add that while I have admired the work of Copeau and Jouvet 
greatly, I do not believe that this theatre, or this type of theatre, has yet 
been utilized to its full measure of beauty and expressiveness. The theory 
of Copeau that everything must be shaped for the actor primarily, is one 
to which every modernist readily subscribes. But it seems to me that after 
neutralizing and formalizing his stage for acting’s sake, Copeau was negli- 
gent at times in the ways in which he made the minor readjustments from 
play to play, and particularly in the failure to utilize the abstract values of 
color and lighting with more appropriateness. These are thoroughly theatri- 
cal expressive means, and belong to this bare stage particularly. In the pro- 
duction of Twelfth Night, for instance, I thought the faint indications of 
locale commonplace where they might have been naively suggestive—the 
bare stage would have been better; and at times in other performances the 
revealment of careless or unfinished details in the stage area jarred as out 
of keeping with the spirit of thorough workmanship—which must obtain 
whether your stage is the picture sort or the plastic sort. But in the main this 
has been at once the pioneer and the most advanced formal permanent stage. 
Copeau may very well ask his fellow-directors pointedly, “What becomes 
of wnity on your stages when the décor is changed from act to act?” 

Very like the Viewx Colombier, inspired by it, and designed with the advice 
of Louis Jouvet, was that Marais Theatre in Brussels where René Moulaert 
for a brief season presented a variety of plays in essentially the same 
architectural scene. Here an existing proscenium remained; but the three- 
level arrangement of fore-stage and main stage, joined with steps, and 
balcony, gave the same freedom of movement, concentration of attention 
and neutrality of background so noticeable at the Viewx Colombier. There 


PAE ARCHITBCTURAY STAGE ay, 


were also the typical permanent portals; but in this case footlights and pro- 
scenium strips largely took the place of the confessed lanterns for lighting. 

Of projects for similar stages, a model by Ladislas Medgyes offers the 
greatest opportunity for varied movement, having four playing levels, 
with open ramps instead of hidden stairways from main platform to bal- 
cony. But here, in an effort to add even more opportunity for the up-and- 
down movement so valued by directors, a large pit occupies the center of the 
main stage—the very space, it seems to me, that should be the most carefully 
cleared and guarded spot of the whole composition. In other words, here is a 
formal stage which, instead of thrusting the action up and forward, leaves 
out almost entirely the stage center, the zrezeau itself. 

A project by Alexander Bakshy—chief proponent, among writers in Eng- 
lish, of the presentational as against the representational performance—ar- 
ranges movable stages on two levels above the main stage floor; and the 
three platforms are flanked by constructions that apparently bring the bal- 
cony floor forward at the sides almost to the stage front, with two breaks 
in level. This design affords a remarkable sense of enclosure and intimacy 
for the main playing space—a great asset—but there is no indication how 
the problems of lighting are to be met. 

All of these permanent stages are reminiscent of the English Elizabethan 
theatre, and most of the artists who have developed them would acknowl- 
edge a debt to William Poel, who did so much to establish the facts about 
Shakespeare’s playhouse and to revive the spirit of that time in the staging 
of old plays. There is no special virtue, of course, in clinging to exact details 
of the Elizabethan or any other ancient theatre, now when conditions are so 
different—it is the freedom and expressiveness of the general form that we 
want—but certainly there is special interest in a structure so like the seven- 
teenth-century playhouse as the little Maddermarket Theatre at Norwich, 
England. It has been called “the first Elizabethan playhouse seen since 
1642,” but it has modern modifications none the less. Its upstanding, un- 
curtained stage, with permanent side walls pierced by portals, and permanent 
rear wall with balcony over a small curtained inner stage, are more than 
reminiscent of the early sixteen hundreds; but movable walls are set in at 
times, and extensive use is made of designed curtains, and of modern light- 


118 STAGE DECORATION 


ing equipment, to accomplish the variety considered necessary for a repertory 
drawn from more than twenty centuries of playwriting. 

From this first type of architectural stage to the sculptural stages, as devel- 
oped particularly by Norman-Bel Geddes, is not such a far cry as one might 
at first glance think. The difference is that the sculptured platform is archi- 
tecture in the lump, without those stylistic refinements and ornaments which 
too often are accepted as the all of architecture. Here is the naked stage 
shaped to afford a series of scenes of diversified character, not in slavish 
imitation of places in nature, but with a bow to the essential shapes and 
flavors of those places. I think that Geddes has not so far attempted to 
design a stage of this sort for permanent use with many plays; he has 
modeled a new stage for every drama, arranging each time his playing 
platforms, ramps and suggested walls to accommodate the action as he 
visualizes it in the rdle of director. There is no logical reason why such 
a sculptured universal stage cannot be designed and utilized for a wide 
repertory. One may even feel that Geddes’ own productions of Arabesque, 
where comparatively large changes in scene were made (always in view of the 
audience), and of Jehanne d’Arc, which was much more abstract and out of 
time and place, might be performed on the stage he designed for The 
Mother of Christ, without too great loss to the acting and action values. 

These stages are all, of course, without curtains; and all are designed 
for use with a flexible lighting equipment which will bring into prominence 
one feature after another of the diversified “structure” in addition to the 
central downstage playing space. The advantages of this type of stage over 
the usual changing-picture sort, in economy, in freedom of physical move- 
ment, in emphasis on the set-out actors, are enormous. Geddes’ project for a 
production of his arrangement of Dante’s Divine Comedy is so gigantic in 
conception, so beyond ordinary means and day-by-day theatre, that it de- 
mands only a note here: that its stage is similar to these less extraordinary 
ones in being sculpturally conceived, wholly plastic, uncurtained, and first of 
all a place for shaping scenes in light.* 

The sculptured stage, of course, being set in space, must be backed by 


* Forty designs are reproduced in A Project for a Theatrical Presentation of the Divine 
Comedy of Dante Alighieri, by Norman-Bel Geddes. New York, 1924. 


Pree eLRe TURAL SLAGE 119 


something—if the theatre is enclosed, not open-air—bare wall of the stage 
box or curtains or a specially prepared wall. Under the localized lighting, 
this background seldom comes into view, and never prominently. For Je- 
hanne @ Arc screens were used as backing, for Arabesque a neutral curtain, 
and for Dante huge wing-like structures rise out of the stage, with gauze 
hung behind. The Germans, who also have occasionally exercised their talents 
in modeling sculptural stages, have the advantage of being able to place 
the construction within the apparently unlimited space of sky-domes. The 
outline sketch of Eduard Sturm’s project for Manfred is typical of experi- 
ment in this direction. 

Just as the Dante project is interesting as a very special rather than a 
type thing, so certain famous productions like those given by Reinhardt 
in “circuses,” although steps toward formal stage practice, warrant passing 
mention rather than extensive description. Even The Miracle production in 
New York, although it was set in a theatre, partook of the nature of an 
individual “stunt” rather than an epoch-making event on the road to the 
future. Scenically it was very impressive: a stage and part of an auditorium 
completely built over into apparently an actual cathedral—and where is 
there a more atmospheric, more glamorous and more usable formal stage 
than in certain cathedrals? But it was not at the heart of our present prob- 
lem, which is the permanent stage shaped as continuing decoration. 

Out of Reinhardt’s circus performances developed that Grosses Schau- 
spielhaus in Berlin which was meant to be a type example of gigantic show- 
house for “people’s theatre” productions. Here an apron stage juts well 
out into the auditorium, “in the midst of the audience”—for Reinhardt had 
learned the value of an uncurtained, architectural scene in establishing an 
immediate rapport with the audience—and behind that are steps up to a 
long narrow platform stage. So much of the playing space is open, perma- 

nent, and adjustable to different levels, a true architectural stage. Its back- 
ing, however, is a curtain in an arch, and behind that is another complete 
stage, with revolving center and sky-dome. The theatre is thus a compro- 
mise, an attempt to combine the elements of the revived formal stage with 
the contemporary peep-hole stage; and like most such spectacular compro- 
mises it is just about half satisfactory to the modernists and less than that 


120 STAGE DECORATION 


to the conservatives. Certain productions in the house have been finely 
dramatic, and Reinhardt utilized cunningly the advantages afforded by the 
fore-stage. But in general, the problem of the “theatre of the five thou- 
sand,” the opportunity for the playhouse that makes the naked stage the 
altar of a people’s cathedral, has yet to find solution. 

Reinhardt’s productions at Vienna, in the Redoutensaal, a theatre con- 
structed in an imperial ballroom, and on temporary platform stages at 
Salzburg, suggest a harking back to that bare stage used for outdoor pro- 
ductions during the Renaissance, and carried indoors on occasion: a long 
platform, in effect, not noticeably shaped as was the Elizabethan, not con- 
nected with the auditorium floor or an apron, and with curtains or screens 
as the main accessories. 

The Redoutensaal theatre has been extravagantly admired by those who 
see a heightening of some personal conception of “theatricalism” in the 
regal beauty of the ornamented hall, the patent artificiality and glamour of 
the crystal chandeliers, the richness of the Gobelin tapestries, and in the gen- 
eral air of formal elegance in the platform backing—hare as is the acting 
space upon it. And certainly here is one of the most fruitful of contemporary 
experiments in gaining decorative values from stage and auditorium as 
one entity, and not from pictures placed successively on the stage. The 
wall that backs the platform is a curved and ornamental architectural con- 
struction in keeping with the richness of the ballroom, but in a more re- 
strained and neutral manner; and it holds doorways for exits and entries, 
and graceful stairs to a balcony above at the back. On this pleasantly for- 
mal stage a mere indication of “scenery” has proved enough: acting has 
become the chief resource of the directors. By a convention which Meyer- 
hold had already utilized elsewhere, the stage and the audience are lighted . 
by the same chandeliers, another link thus being forged to bind the actor and 
the spectator in intimacy. It is to be questioned whether a wide variety of 
plays could be performed here appropriately; the regal, distinctive atmos- 
phere of the place is too heightened. But it is a stage that has shaken itself 
free from the illusion-fallacy, free from the need for machinery or pro- 
scenium or picturing, free for expression within the one limitation imposed 
by the stylistic ballroom architecture. 


PPP oOARCHIT ER CLTURAL STAGE | I21 


A good deal of abstract interest in a special type of semi-formal stage was 
shown in France in 1925, when the architects Auguste and Gustave Perret 
and André Granet designed for the temporary Exposition of Decorative 
Arts a theatre with a “tri-partite” stage. Practically nothing was done to 
prove the potentialities of the theatre: there was no series of appropriate 
dramatic productions directed by artists with an understanding of modernism 
in the theatre. But the stage form stimulated excited if not bitter con- 
troversy. [he composition included a large removable apron stage over what 
was at other times the orchestra pit, a main stage divided by permanent 
structural pillars into a central scene and two lateral scenes, and a back 
stage arrangement of pillars and plaster wall that at least in part could 
stand as a permanent decorative background. 

As a matter of fact, the architects here were harking back not so much 
to the truly architectural stages as to the theatre of the “simultaneous 
scene.” What they had in mind was that this Exposition theatre would help 
solve scenic problems by allowing three scenes to be set at once for suc- 
cessive use, and they made provision for three curtains. But an artist who 
discounts separate scene-making and regards the design of this stage without 
its curtains will discover unusual potentialities and a certain resident nobility 
of form. (Plate 108.) 

Before turning from the architectural stage to the consideration of the 
space stage, I want to add one more word of general theory, or belief. I 
personally see a value in structural form in the carpentered outstanding for- 
mal stage which seems to me hurtfully lacking in space and Constructivist 
stages. Those theatrical values that we talk about so much, that we want 
to reénforce, intensify and heighten, are very vague things; and I believe 
that somehow the shaped permanent stage gives them backbone, continuity 
and solidity. Light in space seems to me too soft a background for continual 
use: I want this hard lump of stage as a core—and I see a nobility gained 
from the design of the continuing austere but responsive platform. 

Hermann Rosse, experimenter with novel ideas of decoration, and one of 
the most far-sighted of our theorists, has written somewhere of the “pure 
structural beauty of an unadorned building, a beautifully finished plat- 
form,” and foresees “a slow development of the purely constructive stage 


032 STAGE DECORATION 


and the oratory platform to a new type of church-like theatre with reflecting 
domes, beautiful materials, beautiful people . . .” We cannot build that 
theatre rightly until after we have explored all that light projected into 
space can bring us in theatrical expressiveness. But I think that in the end 
we shall return to the formal stage, in some expressive and sensitive manifes- 
tation made possible by the precision and elasticity of typical machine-age 
materials and inventiveness. 


XIII 
THE SPACE STAGE 


HE conception of the physical stage primarily as space has a sugges- 

tive parallel in modern architecture. Certain of the stage artists and 
directors insist on getting away from the thought of decorated surfaces 
surrounding the dramatic action, or even the thought of a permanent con- 
structed visible background, in favor of space sculptured in light to show 
up and emphasize the actors and action. Just so a whole school of radicals in 
architecture point to the fallacy of beginning building art with a study of 
walls and their decoration, and insist upon spatial relationships as the heart 
of their problem of design. In both cases it is more than a mere matter 
of space as usually thought of; there is a vague feeling that in certain 
spatial adjustments there is a living beauty, a fourth-dimensional formal 
quality. There is an element involved far beyond any contributive beauty 
to be wrung from shallow surface decoration. 

The fundamental thing differentiating the typical space stage from the 
formal architectural stage is the emphasis on a spot picked out of dark- 
ness, a little piece detached from a void, with the consequent suppression of 
structural surroundings. The director wants no sense of a building, no con- 
scious joining of a stage and an auditorium. Here is a different sort of 
Expressionism from that of the theorists who would keep the physical theatre 
forward, who would utilize the constant presence of the stage as one ele- 
ment in reénforcing essential theatricality. 

The adherents of the void stage feel that they gain greater values out 
of unhampered manipulation of lighting as a dramatic medium than any 
they lose in abandoning architectural decoration and solidity. They even 
feel that a space stage, freed from carpentered rigidity, is able to capitalize 
the potentialities of modern lighting equipment and to some extent modern 
stage machinery in a way far more in keeping with machine-age aesthetics 
than is possible in any other type of building. 

The space stage as known so far is usually the old proscenium-frame 


124 STAGE DECORATION 


picture-box affair cleared out, and wired and equipped for extraordinary 
light range and control. A horizon-dome may back the stage, in which case 
the director’s problems are measurably simplified. It is obvious that this 
cleared-out stage can be used not only for the naked spot-out-of-darkness 
scene, but beyond that for anything from the slightest indication of reality 
to a fully representative scene, which of course is wholly impossible on a 
formal stage like Copeau’s. It is not the stage itself that determines the 
modernism of the productions here, but the artist’s intent and method in 
using the stage or the space in it. 

I cannot do better than go back and speak of one production that proved 
for me the potentialities of the picked-out stage. Masse-Mensch, as it was 
produced at the Volksbiihne in Berlin, began with a scene in which a re- 
stricted, undecorated area of action alone was visible, seemingly picked 
out of a black void by lighting. In this pool of light, down close to the 
audience, three figures appeared, hands clasped, and began to speak their 
lines directly, rapidly, almost precipitately—for the play like the settings 
was Expressionistic, unnatural, out of time and place. The effect was far 
more emotional, more holding, than anything I can imagine in a picture 
setting, however simple. There was absolutely nothing to take the atten- 
tion from the players and their speech and action. Other scenes were played — 
on a darkened stage, sometimes with black curtains surrounding the playing 
space and sometimes with the immense stage opened up like a cathedral at 
night before the dead horizon-dome, with larger areas and groups of players 
picked out by the light. In two scenes there were unobtrusive and un- 
- decorative structures like athletic-field “bleachers” hidden in the veil of 
darkness at the back and at one side; and when these were gradually filled 
with actors, with the light creeping over to reveal nothing but a sea of 
faces, the effect was extraordinarily decorative in a sheer dramatic sense. 
The scene in which the workingmen on the bleachers sang the Internationale 
on this otherwise naked stage, followed by the opening of the curtains 
opposite for the entry of troops and a volley, remains in my mind as one 
of the most vivid scenes in all my playgoing experience. The sheerness, the 
directness, were used here for melodramatic effect; but in other scenes the 
drama was not mixed with violence, although always far from nature. In 


Lbs i Cia LAG Te Tes 


one scene huge screen-like shapes towered over the area of light—they 
might have been meant to suggest cliffs or walls askew, but were more prob- 
ably designed only for an abstract emotional effectiveness. Again a red 
cage stood out as if on a black hilltop against a dim sky. Only one scene 
touched material reality, suggested actual place, when the bases of two 
architectural columns showed in an opening between curtains. Thus in one 
play was the gamut run from decoration wholly by light in a void to a 
detached indication of a natural locale. And that is the range of the space 
stage as most of the advanced adherents of the idea are using it. 

I do not mean that this production illustrated the profounder and more 
meticulously conceived aspects of drama as made effective through mathe- 
matical or musical manipulation of space. One must turn to the later work 
of Adolphe Appia for a demonstration of the subtler uses of the idea. 

Appia, working forward from the postulates of his early writings, the in- 
sistence that the actor’s presence, his three-dimensional body, must be made 
to dominate, that right emphasis is impossible in the flat two-dimensional 
setting, and that light is the living factor to take the place of the old dead 
sort of scene, came later to a new conception of the values of space and of 
architectural elements sparingly used. Having entirely discounted the pic- 
torial values of the proscenium stage, he arrived at the belief that the 
actor would stand out best in space against reticent architectural masses, 
with flat surfaces and very few accentuated lines or angles. “Living space” 
became the heart of his physical scene. 

Appia’s production of The Tidings Brought to Mary at Hellerau in 1913 
was a landmark in progress toward a new stage. Kenneth Macgowan* wrote: 
‘The stage and the scene were identical and consisted merely of a complex of 
movable platforms and steps, supplemented by simple flats and hangings. 
These could be arranged almost endlessly.” But this stage was even less 
simple than the starkly architectural affair Appia has since come to cham- 
pion; it was, indeed, not unlike the plastic arranged stages with stairs, plat- 
forms and pylons dreamed and sketched by Craig in the period when he 
was working with screens. 

Later Appia wrote that all the theatre need be is “an elementary structure 


* The Theatre of Tomorrow, New York, 1921. 


126 STAGE DECORATION 


designed simply to give shelter to the space where we work. No scene, no 
auditorium; merely a room naked and empty—and expectant; everywhere 
space cleared for the things actually used; a full lighting equipment.” And 
his drawings for scenes, as reproduced in those two remarkable brochures, 
POeuvre @ Art Vivant and Art Vivant ou Nature Mort? indicate just such 
nudity, just such throwing of emphasis on the acting that goes into the scene. 
A platform placed across the end of a hall, with steps up to it, and perhaps 
a solid or pierced wall to carry up one line and mass in contrast, or a 
pillar, each such element being placed with exact attention to the dramatic 
uses and effects of the lines, proportions, shadows; the floor apparently 
made of the same materials and blending into the wall or pillar; and at the 
back as near nothingness as can be achieved. Copeau and Geddes and Rein- 
hardt, for all their confessed stages, have not approached this simplicity, 
this abstraction, this capitalization of movement in space. It seems the last 
word in the attempt to heighten the presence of the actor, to subordinate 
the inanimate elements in the scene, to put the emphasis on living action 
in living light. It is not in the current of full-blooded Expressionism, per- 
haps, in that it does not utilize dynamically the physical form of an obvious 
stage, or the more melodramatic values of lighting; but who shall say 
that it is not the most sensitively expressive stage yet devised since light was 
conquered and made a major theatric medium? (Plates 112 and 113.) 

Of those who have most successfully opened up their stages to unencum- 
bered space and light, consistently erecting thereon barest indications of 
reality, Leopold Jessner, director of the State Theatre in Berlin, and his 
designer Emil Pirchan, have been both pioneers and foremost practitioners. 
They are likely to build their stage out with an apron on a lower level, 
which has the double advantage of adding to the playing space and giving 
opportunity for increased movement up and down; and they may have a 
platform well back on the main stage, or steps (Jessner so noticeably capi- 
talized stairs as playing space that the word “Jessner-treppen” is in every 
theatre vocabulary in Germany). On this series of levels, alone or with a 
column or balustrade or arch, Jessner plays his actors in or against the light. 
When the curtain rises on the performance, one is likely to have the im- 
pression of looking into limitless space, with the shaped platform or deco- 


THE SPACE STAGE 127 


rative terrace placed in the brighter light forward to center the action. 
This platform is probably in itself unobtrusively decorative. It may be car- 
peted (it was in rose-red throughout in Dow Carlos), and it may be edged 
with gold; and it stands against a horizon-dome that is gratefully soft to 
the eye, velvet dark or impalpably light or opalescent, as may be appropriate. 
Levels in space, with an intimation of architecture here or the furnishings of 
a throne room there—such is the summary of Jessner’s “stage decoration.” 

Others carry the intimation of reality one step farther, without losing 
the sense of detachment from life. A little conglomerate of columns, or 
windows and doors, or screens, together with the necessary furniture, is 
formed into a decorative vignette and set out in space. Lee Simonson used 
the method memorably in the Theatre Guild production of The Failures, 
and even on the small Garrick Theatre stage succeeded in creating the im- 
pression of a detached bit of nature, a bit pulled free and set into light in 
a void stage (plate 115). The method came into prominence first in Ger- 
many, as an alternate of painted Expressionism, a different sort of dis- 
tortion, and there on the domed stages absolute isolation of the lighted vig- 
nette was possible. In the Guild Theatre Lee Simonson has occasionally 
reverted to the principle in a larger way, building a half-realistic sculptural 
scene and then setting it out as if swimming in toned light. Such was the 
impression afforded by the settings for Werfel’s The Goat Song. 

This consideration of the “fragmentary setting in space” has led me back 
as close to selective realism as is proper, perhaps, in a consideration of 
Expressionistic stages. Let us turn instead to those indications of reality that 
lead less to realization of place than to Constructivist means for acting. If 
one takes the trouble to run over the simplified scenes that have been most 
widely heralded among students of stagecraft during the last ten years, 
one will find not a few examples that eliminated pretty much everything 
except playing space and “practicable” elements. These were not strictly 
and technically Constructivist settings, because the practical elements for 
successive scenes were not woven into one composition, with consequent dis- 
carding of the proscenium curtain. In a sense, Craig’s screen settings were 
designed from a conception of the space stage rather than from a “picturing” 
point of view; and some of his simplest sketches and models might well be 


128 STAGE DECORATION 


considered steps in the direction of Constructivism. Apropos of the ideas of 
Jessner and Appia and the space stage and a very few architectural ele- 
ments, one remembers Craig’s designs for The Steps. In the description, 
after he speaks of “dramas where speech becomes paltry and inadequate,” 
he adds, “. . . among all the dreams that the architect has laid upon the 
earth, I know of no more lovely things than his flights of steps leading up 
and leading down, and of this feeling about architecture in my art I have 
often thought how one could give life (not a voice) to these places, using 
them to a dramatic end. When this desire came to me I was continually 
designing dramas wherein the place was architectural and lent itself to my 
desire. And so I began with a drama called ‘The Steps.’ ” 

Robert Edmond Jones even some ten years ago made sketches for a pro- 
duction of Maeterlinck’s The Seven Princesses which foreshadowed Con- 
structivism in its use of skeleton architecture set in space: an outline of a 
Gothic apse on a semi-circular stair unit, lighted out of darkness. One recalls 
also that many of the individual scenes in that well-remembered if unsuccess- 
ful production of Macbeth in New York, under the direction of Arthur Hop- 
kins and in settings by Jones, had this same naked quality. The production 
failed of its chief purpose because the acting had no relation to the settings, 
although planned to be similarly expressive. But throughout the scenes there 
was a sense of visual abstract dramatic form, derived out of a personal 
emotional reading of the poet’s text; they were not real or suggestive of 
detailed reality, and they were not symbolic in the shallow sense; they were 
directly expressive of dramatic feeling, in terms of light, color and a 
very few more or less architectural constructions set out in a void—a formal 
and theatrical equivalent of some vaguely remembered necessary actuality. 

The same dependence upon line and abstract composition, equally far from 
actuality, is illustrated in the two scenes from Alexander Tairoff’s produc- 
tion of Phédre at the Kamerny Theatre in Moscow (plate 114). Movement 
plays so great a part in Tairoff’s presentations, be it noted, that his school 
of the theatre has special courses in juggling and acrobatics; and one of his 
fundamental requirements is “an exact working out of the stage levels: these 
must be built differently for every play, they must be built according to 
the dynamic and rhythmic-plastic requirements of the play and are used as a 


THE SPACE STAGE 129 


piano for revealing the actor’s movements and emotions.” It is easy to see 
how this theory, with Tairoff as with Meyerhold, later developed into 
full-blown Constructivism. At this period, composition in planes on a naked 
stage had become a source of extraordinary dramatic effectiveness. In the 
Phédre production it was a case of planes used for movement’s sake, with the 
edges emphasized as abstract decorative line. The “directions” of the com- 
position underlined the action of the players, and the total design reénforced 
the director’s conception of the play. 

There is, however, this one great difference between the work of Jones, 
Appia, Jessner, and Tairoff in his early days, and the work of the avowed 
Constructivists: the latter insist not only that the two-dimensional decorative 
elements must be discarded, but that the stage construction must be designed 
anti-decoratively. 

To many of us it has seemed that the great merit of Craig, Appia, Copeau, 
Geddes, Jones, Jessner and their fellows lies in the finding of a new deco- 
rativeness to take the place of the flat picture sort, a decorativeness more 
appropriately theatrical in being three-dimensional and resolved out of the 
typically stage mediums of light, space and architecture. In denying the 
validity of amy visual decorative values, in affirming that aesthetic intent 
in the arranging of the stage can only harm the action thereon, the Con- 
structivists have uttered a revolutionary cry more radical and more far- 
reaching in its implications than any other in the whole history of staging. 


Ls o4 Wee 


Tiree [9 


XIV 
CONS ERUCTIVISM 


HE typical Constructivist setting may be described as a skeleton struc- 

ture made up of the physically necessary means for acting a play: an 
agolomeration of the stairs, platforms, runways, etc., called for by the 
dramatist, stripped to their basic and structural forms, held together by 
plain scaffolding, and arranged to permit the running off of the play at its 
fullest theatrical intensity. It is all the scenes of a play simplified to the 
bone and woven into one scene. Always the true Constructivist setting is 
conceived for use without a curtain and to stand in space from the time the 
audience arrives until it leaves. It is utterly (and finely) unnatural, in 
its grouping together of many elements detached from life, and in its 
bareness, its lack of every casual detail of nature and of such usual ele- 
ments as walls and ceilings. Every plank and post of it is tested by the rigid 
question of its functional use. It is the “practicables” of the old pictorial 
scene plucked out of the picture, skeletonized and nailed together for safe 
usage. What “design” is expended on weaving these naked structural things 
into one whole theoretically has the sole purpose of capitalizing movement 
as a revealing theatrical element. 

One example may look like a mere scaffolding holding up three or four 
platforms, some probably tilted, at various levels, with stairs or ladders or 
runways between and from the stage floor. Another may be far more in- 
volved, with platforms railed, wheels added, cages, awnings, benches, 
bridges, lattices, window frames, mere “shapes.” Where one is delicate and 
intricate, almost lace-like in effect, another will be composed of heavy masses, 
broad ramps instead of ladders, blocks instead of posts. In some there is very 
obvious attempt to achieve a machine-like combination of heaviness and 
precision. In them all, from the auditorium standpoint, the spectator “sees 
the works.”? Movement of the construction itself, or of its parts, is added 
as an effect in extreme cases. 

Despite protestations that nothing beyond functional use determines the 
construction, the spectator may occasionally make out a complete balcony 


132 STAGE DECORATION 


here or a sheltering corner of a room there, a recognizable bit from ordinary 
life. But it is true that the Constructivists of the far Left look on practi- 
tioners like Rabinovitch, with his famous skeleton colonnade for Lysistrata 
(plate 119), as a compromiser of the principles of the true faith. He has 
even been accused of romanticising. Because his naked columns were joined 
at the top and bottom by pieces reminiscently curved, he had betrayed the 
mother that begat him. 

What are the sources of this impatience with anything not strictly utili- 
tarian? It is, as a matter of fact, part and parcel of a revolutionary creed 
that has stirred up bitter dissension in the fields of all the arts during the 
last decade, from literature to architecture. It is born of the laudable desire 
to rid art of excessive ornament, sentiment and high polish, characteristics of 
the weak nineteenth century. If we get not back to structure, naked emotion 
and expressive form as the bases of art creation, we might just as well 
resign ourselves to the continuing weak echoes of stylistic art that have per- 
sisted from Victorianism and before: with sentimental story-telling, with a 
photographically realistic theatre, with pretty reproductive and anecdotal 
painting, with architecture in watered imitation of the great outworn styles. 
The revolution in its various phases dates back as far as Cezanne in painting, 
abandoning everything else in the search for a realization of “form,” to 
Louis Sullivan in architecture, going back to honest uncompromising struc- 
ture, to the Expressionist impulse in all the arts. But chiefly it was the engi- 
neer and the designer of machines who inspired the “utilitarian” wing of 
the modernist army. Particularly, the American skyscraper, in its nudity 
and daring, is cited as opening the eyes of the young European radicals to 
a new and different sort of beauty—not the skyscrapers as our average over- 
cultured architects left them in the end, with weakly decorative and inappro- 
priate facades hung on, but in their unfinished skeleton state or as a rare 
genius like Sullivan left them. 

Beyond that was the inspiration out of machinery. I can speak whole- 
heartedly with these radicals here. I think that no other creative artists in 
America to-day are quite so worthy of praise and recognition as those who 
have made our automobiles—absolutely expressive of their purpose, true to 
machine materials of the age, beautiful to the eye without an added line of 


CONSTRUCTIVISM 133 


ornament. This directness, this truth, this sheerness, this expressive beauty, 
was what we needed to get back to in our “fine” arts. The Dadaists wanted 
to begin by destroying everything that had come down to the present as 
an art heritage from the past. They wanted to sweep out clean. They saw no 
way out but to blast into eternity everything accumulated in the name of 
art. Steadier heads (I think! ) understood that much of the art of the past 
had been absolutely right for its eras; foresaw that an opportunity to prome- 
nade in the spirit of those eras might occasionally refresh the spirit of man; 
that we were simply wrong to hold to the frills and echoes of other times in 
a period of new machine-age standards. The machine, with its massiveness 
and its intricacy, its rightness, its perfect functioning, its precise shaping and 
its clean surfaces, its balance—this was a clue to an art for the times. Here 
Constructivism began. 

Most of us who are interested particularly in the theatre forget that 
Constructivism came into art, as a word and as a mode, not in connection 
with the stage but as an attempt at an independent studio form of creative 
expression. The Russian Constructivists designed models out of machine 
materials, steel, armor-plate, glass, copper, wood, wire, wheels, springs; and 
these they exhibited along with Cubist pictures and sculptures. 

It is possible that the thing came into the playhouse as a separate theatrical 
development. One can argue that the steady march of stage decoration 
toward greater and greater simplicity, and finally toward elimination, made 
the purely functional stage a logical and inevitable outcome. Decoration as 
such dropping away, left bare structure. But it seems to me far more likely 
that theatre directors, studying the independent constructions, said to them- 
selves, “What wonderful things to act upon!”; and straightway the Con- 
structivists were called in to serve the theatre—the theatre in which move- 
ment had recently become such a resource. 

Meyerhold is generally credited with originating the mode on the stage, 
with Tairoff close after him. Jakouloff and Popova are usually named as 
the most important early practitioners. They brought into being the skeleton 
setting designed to serve as the physical stage on which every act of a given 
play could be performed. Whatever the origin, it was a fitting climax to the 
simplifying-eliminating process to which stage decoration had been sub- 
mitted during a quarter of a century previous. 


134 STAGE DECORATION 


If a stage setting can be thus designed, or put together, as logically, with 
as much truth to purpose, with as perfect feeling for the right usable mate- 
rial, as in the making of machines, why is it not the perfect utilitarian scene? 
And if it is perfect in the utilitarian way, can it avoid then being decorative 
in the broader sense? I for one believe that if it achieves perfection as a 
machine for theatric action, it will necessarily be decorative. As long as man 
designs the machine with a feeling for thorough workmanship, for the 
final “rightness” of the mechanism in its job, he cannot but add that formal 
quality that gives it an aesthetic appeal, that marks it at the same time as 
art. 

The avowed anti-decorationists not only claim that it is necessary to strip 
the setting of every shred of decorative appeal, but assert that the creation 
of art can come only by absolute design-for-use without the slightest ad- 
mixture of so-called aesthetic intention. There is an arbitrary attempt here 
to limit aestheticism to self-conscious manipulation of “fine arts” materials. 
But art, I believe, may arrive where there is consciously or unconsciously 
the desire to create the thing not only usably but with clean-cut thorough 
workmanship and with a mark of its absolute rightness on it. The deco- 
rative value resides in that right form. 

The anti-decorationists seem to me right just half the way along the line— 
to this extent: the aesthetic appeal is more direct, fresher, more basic, if the 
decorative quality is achieved instinctively, while the artist is apparently ab- 
sorbed wholly in the problems of use, than when he tries to add to the essen- 
tial thing through a mode of ornament or a formula for composition or 
decoration. They are right in revolting against too much manufacture of art 
by theory, too much academism, too much acceptance of surface decoration 
as art, too much love of technical polish, too much shallow stylistic pre- 
tense. But for all the rightness of the desire to prick the balloon of pre- 
tension and dogma flown by accepted art authorities, they cannot separate 
art expression even in the machine from a legitimate decorativeness. Unless 
they are perversely unworkmanlike, they cannot, being artists and creators 
at heart, make a thing that is noticeably undecorative. It seems to me that 
they are thus perverse when they set their construction against an old stage 
wall without covering its obviously inappropriate inscriptions, radiators and 


CONSTRUCTIVISM bis 


sprinkler systems. They can utilize bareness, sheerness of surface, beauti- 
fully; but carelessness and shoddy workmanship and perverse loose ends 
are no virtue in the machine age. 

So, not believing that the true Constructivist setting can be anti-decorative 
—only that it is decorative im its own different way—lI find the mode one 
of the most logical of the several devised to take the place of the pictorial 
scene. It affords wonderful freedom of action, its nudity is a virtue in the 
greater opportunity afforded for spatial composition, and it solves as well as 
the formal stage the problem of running off many-scened plays without 
interruption (but only for one play). Personally I still see a flat uninvolved 
architectural backing as the best means of setting out the quieter forms of 
action, and I feel the need for a solid permanent architectural central plat- 
form for acting as the basis for my composition or construction. Moreover, 
I distrust intricacy of structure as likely to distract almost as much as a 
picture. But I think any designer of a stage or settings would be a fool if 
he did not learn from the Constructivist something of variety, pliability, 
economy, truth to use. The lesson might well be called to the attention of 
playwrights also. 

The moving settings still seem to me wholly impossible for the vast 
majority of plays in which we are here interested, where the acted drama 
is the first consideration. That is not to say that a special form of theatrical 
entertainment may not evolve around them. S. Margoline, writing recently 
in the Little Review, evidently saw movement of the setting itself as a 
prime characteristic of Constructivism: “Everything comes as a surprise in 
this new kind of ‘construction.’ To accompany a crescendo in the play, the 
stage or the objects begin to turn and to metamorphose. Architects and 
engineers are superceding the painter. The theatre looks like a kind of 
factory. The actor is merely a laborer in the ‘theatre shop.’ He produces a 
certain number of values. He is no longer a player, he works.” But that is 
getting over into the field of the glorification of the mechanical at the ex- 
pense of traditional acted drama, the field of Kiesler and Prampolini, which 
we have already ruled out of the present discussion. 

Those first Constructivist settings that were published to the world out 
of Russia a few years ago now seem a little self-consciously nude, stiff and 


136 STAGE DECORATION 


self-proclaimingly stripped of all softening human influences. But later 
even in Meyerhold’s theatres they have appeared to be more instinctively 
designed to add their own contributive bit to the interest of the unfolding 
drama even while serving it practically, to live with it rather than merely 
to offer enlivening opportunity for agile feet. 

In Tairoff’s Kamerny Theatre, in the Jewish Habima Theatre in Moscow, 
in the Musical Studios of the Moscow Art Theatre, Constructivism in various 
phases has been developed to a recognized and recognizable mode; and of 
course all over Germany the principle is being tried out. My illustrations 
(plates 118 to 121) are chosen to show the variety of its manifestations, but 
the persistence of its utilitarian idea. 


In final summary: The story of stage decoration extends over century after 
century of production on purely architectural stages. It is only in the last 
tenth of the known history of the theatre that the picture mode of setting 
has been in existence, that the painter and his materials have held sway on 
the stages of the Western world. But no art ever capitulated to a new form 
of exterior dress more completely. For two and a half centuries previous 
to 1890 the rule of the perspective-painting scenic artist was absolute and 
unchallenged. 

The change in the last thirty-five years has been enormous: a true revolu- 
tionary overturn. At first the picture in the proscentum-frame box was al- 
tered from a painter’s display of virtuosity to a photographically true por- 
trayal of places, in the interest of naturalism. Painted perspective and painted 
illusion of things disappeared, and plastic elements crept into the scene. The 
next minor revolution initiated the movement toward simplification which 
has continued ever since. At first the picture was merely stripped of unneces- 
sary detail. Then suggestion was added to simplification: the picture inti- 
mated more than it stated. Then design came in, consciously, and the wholly 
tasteful simple setting evolved. And as a final improvement in the picture 
mode, stylization was accomplished, austere or lavish, posteresque or reti- 
cent, historical or aesthetic. 

It is in this field of thoroughly stylized simple picture scenes that the 
great mass of fairly progressive directors and decorators practice to-day. 


CONSTRUCTIVISM 137 


That is, they dress their productions prettily, tastefully, appealingly, with 
the unifying glamour of a creative stylization over all the places, capitalizing 
the allurements of color and the subtleties of light, and grasping not a 
little of the values inherent in abstract composition in line and mass. But 
they never violate reality beyond the limits set by the selective painters 
or the “art” photographers. They limit themselves to a selective represen- 
tation of natural places, an atmospheric approximation of realism. 

Beyond them the true experimenters, including, no doubt, the giant fig- 
ures of to-morrow’s theatre, have pursued the ideas of simplification, the 
plastic and abstraction to the logical conclusion. They have done away with 
the picture. Accepting as axiomatic that the actor is the all-important ele- 
ment in production, they have acted upon the truth that only a three-dimen- 
sional stage can be appropriate to the actor in the round. Simplification led 
to the elimination of the picture elements, while further study of abstraction 
and of that typically modern theatric element, living light, led to a new 
conception of the stage as architecture and space. Being truly Expressionistic, 
they evolved means of using creatively the physical features of the stage 
itself and the formal values of space and light. They came in practice to 
those three types of non-pictorial staging to which I have devoted the final 
section of my essay: the formal permanent architectural stage (or its cousin, 
the sculptured stage), the void or emphasized-space scene, and the Con- 
structivist engineered setting. 

I see the dramatist now freed from the cramping limitations of realism 
(unless he feels that he must write unreservedly for the so-called com- 
mercial theatre), and I believe that these types of stage are the logical 
places for acting his new drama, and for all drama written outside the con- 
fined realistic era—as far as we can see now. It seems to me that a different 
formal stage may evolve which, without being a compromise of the under- 
lying principles of modernism, will unite principles out of the three types: a 
basic permanent platform and neutral background, wide and unhampered 
working and lighting space, and means for constructing easily and quickly 
when needed the platforms on different levels and the barest intimations 
of locality that Constructivism affords. 

If I personally find in these types of stage the true modernism, and if 


138 STAGE DECORATION 


my reader on the other hand clings to the known virtues of the recognizable 
picture of a place as setting, neither one of us need be too impatient of the 
other’s viewpoint. Perhaps we both are right, considering the type of play 
to which we pin our faith and hope. Then too there is a middle ground on 
which we can meet quite happily if not entirely without suspicion, the field 
wherein are working those who have kept up with modernist thought, but 
who modify their radicalism to meet reasonable conditions, conditions that 
demand that the stage setting have a safe anchor in actual place but without 
cramping all artistic purpose. Wanting to recognize that there is an evolu- 
tionary process still at work in the larger theatre, as well as a revolutionary 
accomplishment in the exceptional insurgent theatre, and not being really 
arbitrary at heart, I am choosing my final illustrations from that middle 
ground: the “flat” setting by Jouvet for Dr. Knock, showing how he is 
working on a picture stage but obviously with the space idea (he says he 
never designs a setting, only diagrams it); a scene by Robert Edmond 
Jones as he works on a Broadway stage with Arthur Hopkins; two things 
by Lee Simonson of the Theatre Guild, setting his realistic scenes, more 
sculptured than pictured, out in space; and settings by Emil Pirchan, sim- 
plifying down the walls of his ceilingless rooms until, without too far vio- 
lating actuality, he touches so close to abstraction that there is no finding 
any dividing line between this and Expressionism. These and the works of a 
goodly number of designers and directors in thorough-going Germany, and 
in not a few half-experimental American theatres like the Neighborhood 
Playhouse in New York and the far Western community theatres—these 
are perhaps the best proof of the march toward a simple formalism, a better 
indication for the average reader than are the stark accomplishments of the 
discoverers and prophets. 

When we again have great plays, not limited to the peep-hole view of 
individual lives, the noble plays that we now need far more than any 
additional changes in stage decoration, and when we have again, as a common 
thing, noble acting, we shall without question have a thoroughly expressive 
and appropriate stage ready. For we have found the ways to utilize space, 
light, levels for movement, and, I think or hope, something out of archi- 
tecture. 


PAR etl 


A PICTORIAL RECORD OF STAGE FORMS 
AND DECORATION FROM THE 
BEGINNINGS TO 1900 


Plate 1 These vase drawings represent the earliest known 
evidence regarding stage forms and decoration, 
throwing light on a rudimentary type of popular 
comedy stage of which no actual traces and no ade- 
quate descriptions survive: a simple platform for 
acting, joined by steps with the orchestra below. 
The Greek theatre as the world knows it from 
existing ruins, the theatre of the great tragedy- 
writers, grew rather out of some such “pre-thea- 
tre” as is indicated in the conjectural sketch below: 
a circle for dancing, a hollowed hillside for the 
spectators, and—since the drama first developed 
out of processionals and rites in honor of Dionysus 


—probably a temple in the background. 


ff 
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Re aa i eS 


li Sie 


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ieee aS 


OOH 


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a 


Plate 2 At the edge of the ever-present dancing-circle of 
the Greek theatre, a hut or skene for the actor was 
set up, and this gradually was elaborated into a low 
scene-building, possibly influenced decoratively by 
the form of the temple. The drawing (above) 
after a reconstruction by Professor James Turney 
Allen is probably the nearest approximation we 
have—though still half conjectural—of the 
“decoration” before which the plays of Aeschylus, 
Sophocles and Euripides were first acted, in the 
Theatre of Dionysus at Athens. The lower draw- 
ing, by A. von Gerkan, is a reconstruction of a later 
scene-building, at Priene. The sketch on this page 
is a suggested reconstruction of the early Athens 
theatre by Dorpfeld, the German scholar who di- 
rected the thorough excavation of the Theatre of 
Dionysus, advancing the now generally accepted 
theory that the truly Greek theatres had no raised 
stages. 


Tih 


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SEG el li an 


MTT : AMMA NTN T i y wmv f my 
a {~ min tl H i tt ill ee 1 KHIR LU it On HAI REL HL HRA i IAAT AK Ra 


i 


Plate 3 Two views of the Fourth Century Theatre of Di- 
onysus, as reconstructed by August Frickenhaus. A 
conjectural if not hazardous reconstruction of the 
skene, but suggestive here because indicating the 
relationship of the playing area to the auditorium, 
the larger “theatre form.” The outline sketch be- 
low is a reconstruction by E. R. Fiechter of the 
theatre at Oropus. 


ai ere eg 


t 

; 
7 

: 


Sains mince ree 
ere 


Plate 4 Fiechter’s sketch of the late Greek theatre at 


sus. What had been theretofore a proskenior $ 
struction backing the actor, became a ] 
stage in the late Greek or Greek-Roman peri 
Below, an outline sketch by Fiechter of t 
theatre. oy ome 


Plate 5 A drawing of the theatre at Priene, showing the la- 
ter stage-building, by A. von Gerkan; and a photo- 
graph illustrating the state of the theatre to-day, 
with portions reassembled from the ruins. Below is 
a sketch of the theatre as it looked from the out- 
side, in which the reader should note the general 
openness of the structure, and the relative size of 
the stage-building and the auditorium. 


7 
GE 
peli: 


vh 


== 


9 SI SSS. 


aN 


Plate 6 Two reconstructions of the stage of the Roman 
theatre at Orange: above, Caristie’s version, from 
painstaking measurements and study; below, a 
sketch made under the direction of Camille Saint- 
Saéns. The full orchestra circle of the Greek thea- 
tre has been cut to half and joined to the seating 
space; all the acting is done on the low stage, now 
backed with a monumental wall with story upon 
story of architectural decoration. On this page, a 
drawing of a bas-relief showing Roman actors 
against a stage wall. 


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A SRO? 


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We Tope 3 
iz acs Gebers Ce 


Fe 


Se pu OR HD 


pis ee 


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fa ws 


I 


ih 


r 
= ti 


————— i ti 
: ll 


i 


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. 
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° 
. 
. 
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* 


Plate 7 The Roman theatre at Aspendus: a reconstruction 
by Lanckoronski, and a nineteenth-century view of 
the ruins. On this page, a sketch of the Greek- 
Roman theatre at Termessus. These views of ex- 
isting ruins leave no doubt that the world knows 
the true type-form of the Roman theatre struc- 
ture, and the manner of architectural decoration of 
the wall that formed a background to the actors. 


< 


SeVEWRIFER VED RE OT Le 


ee 
~ <5 ARERR USELESS 8, 


R248 


Plate 8 Pompey’s Theatre in Rome (above): a more or 
less conjectural restoration by A. Streit, but sug- 
gestive of the typical sense of enclosure and rich- 
ness of ornamentation. The bit of painted screen 
at the end of the stage is not based on actual evi- 
dence. It is known beyond dispute that the Romans 
utilized clever stage machinery for effects in their 
spectacles, but there is no contemporary description 
of painted scenery, although machines for imdicat- 
ing change of scene, the periacti, had three painted 
faces. The lower drawing shows a Roman stage 
wall reconstructed after the evidence of mural 
paintings preserved at Pompei, by G. von Cube. 


tee, 


“y 
{i 
| 
i 
| 


Plate g In direct line between the ancient theatre and the 
playhouse of to-day is this Italian theatre of the 
sixteenth century: the Olympic Theatre, or Palla- 
dian Theatre, at Vicenza. Suggesting a small Ro- 
man theatre roofed over, it has structurally and 
decoratively most of the features of the late Ro- 
man playhouse. But beyond the stage doorways 
were added, in 1585, the vistas in diminishing per- 
spective, the make-believe architecture that is 
clearly a forerunner of picture scenery, as seen in 
the lower photograph opposite. On this page is a 
drawing after a project of Inigo Jones, indicating 
that even a traveling English architect was imme- 
diately struck by the possibilities of widening one 
of the doorways and adding the space within the 
vista to the playing stage. 


\ 


AAA || me | 


4a" 


(I 


wi 
(a 


H mn 8) ine 
Lentini rita a 


“Law 
| | ree 


Plate 10 Early in the seventeenth century this first “mod- 
ern” theatre was built: the Farnese Theatre in 
Parma. (From a drawing by J. M. Olbrich made 
for Streit’s Das Theater.) For the first time the 
curtained stage is seen 1n a permanent theatre- 
building: the stage has been pushed through the 
doorway, which now becomes the proscenium 
frame for a picture scene. Below are added sketch 
plans of type theatres from Greek to Renaissance. 
Having vaulted over important developments in 
the history of decoration as such, in order to keep 
clear the progression of the theatre form from 
Greek dancing-circle to framed and curtained 
stage, we shall now go back to trace the origins of 
the picture elements that are to go within the 
frame. 


GREEK TYPE ROMAN TYPE RENAISSANCE 
(AFTER VICENZA) 


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Plate 11 After the obscuring of the theatre in the Dark 
Ages, and long before the building of the revived 
classic playhouses of the Renaissance, the drama 
was reborn in the Christian church. Incidents were 
acted out in the altar area—as magnificent a for- 
mal stage as any ever invented. Then the porch 
outside the church was utilized as a stage. Opposite 
are shown a typical altar area and a church porch. 
Below is a sketch by Viollet-le-Duc of a ceremony 
in Notre Dame de Paris in the eighteenth century. 


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Plate 12 A drawing of the outdoor multiple stage for the 
French Mystery Play, after a contemporary minia- 
ture by Fouquet. Below is a drawing after a recon- 
struction by Albert Késter of a typical Meister- 
singer stage of the sixteenth century as set up in a 
church. 


iy = 
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Plate 13 The stage of the Valenciennes Passion Play of 
1547, after a contemporary miniature by Cailleau. 
The “stations” or “‘mansions” are a characteristic 
feature, with Heaven at the right end of the stage, 
and a realistic-fantastic, “Hell-mouth” at the 
other. Sometimes termed the “stage of the simul- 
taneousiscenc. 


Plate 14 In England particularly the wagon-stage was a 
common feature of the presentation of the peram- 
bulatory Miracle Plays. The cars varied greatly in 
form, appointments and decorativeness. ‘These are 
examples of the less elaborate types. The one op- 
posite is from an old engraving (taken from 
Sharp’s Coventry Mysteries), and the other, be- 
low, from a drawing by Hermann Rosse. 


Plate 15 An isolated form of stage, not directly connected 
with the ancient playhouse or with later develop- 
ments, existed in the theatres wherein the Roman 
comedies were revived during the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries. This view of a complete thea- 
tre is from an illustration in the Trechsel edition 
of Terence, 1493. Below, a cut of the formal ar- 
chitecture-and-curtains stage, from the same book. 


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Plate 16 Examples of plain platform stages, with curtain 
backgrounds, common in the period when the secu- 
lar drama was again finding itself, in the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries. Opposite, the reproduc- 
tion above is after the famous print by Bosse of the 
stage of Tabarin in Paris; below, an etching by 
Callot of a stage of the Commedia del? Arte 
players. On this page a German stage for a folk- 
play of the Hans Sachs period (1574). 


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Plate 17 The Elizabethan stage in England, after a contem- 
porary drawing of the Swan Theatre by Johann 
deWitt, 1596. The evidence on which is based a 
considerable part of to-day’s knowledge of the 
form of Shakespeare’s playhouse, with a_ half- 
covered, projecting architectural stage. Below are 
other bits of evidence, from the title-pages of 
Roxana (1632) and Messallina (1640). The cur- 
tained inner stage, though absent in deWitt’s 
drawing, is generally accepted as a typical feature; 
although there is as yet no painted “ scenery.” 


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Plate 18 Reconstruction of a typical Shakespearean stage by 
Victor E. Albright. Below is a redrawing of the 
frontispiece of Kirkman’s Wits (1672 or 1673). 


. 


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Plate 19 Reconstruction of the Fortune Theatre by Walter 
H. Godfrey. Below is a reconstruction by G. P. 


Fauconnet. 


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Plate 20 If there is any evidence of a link between the 
Elizabethan playhouse and the proscenium-frame 
theatre that 1s shortly to be introduced to all the 
countries of Europe, this curious Amsterdam play- 
house must be considered to provide it in most gen- 
erous measure. [he architectural stage, so reminis- 
cent of the “stations,” with its restricted glimpses 
of “perspectives” through two apertures at the 
back, and its main curtain only a few feet back from 
the platform edge, exhibits features from widely 
separated forms of theatre (1638). Below are two 
engravings of outdoor stages more like the Eliza- 
bethan type: at left, the Rederijker stage at Ghent 
(1539), and at right, the Rederijker stage at Ant- 
werp (1561). 


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Plate 21 


Transitional stages: the “station stage” plan of the 
Mysteries applied to secular production, before ar- 
rival at the single-scene picture stage. Above, a 
sketch for a production at Cologne in 1581. Below, 
a sketch for a multiple scene at the Hotel de Bour- 
gogne, Paris, for la Folie de Clidamant, about 
1633. The description as put down by Mahelot, 
the designer, reads: “There must be in the middle 
of the stage a beautiful palace; and at one side a 
sea, on which appears a ship rigged with masts and 
sails, whereon a woman appears and throws herself 
into the sea; and at the other side a pretty room 
which opens and closes, where there 1s a bed made 
up with-sheets- 27 


While we are here still in the period of the curtain- 
less stage, we have arrived obviously at certain pic- 
ture elements, evolved partly out of the religious 
productions and partly out of the first knowledge 
of the “Italian style.” Having examined the sev- 
eral sorts of formal stage from which the picture 
was wholly absent, or on which its first elements 
appear, we may now turn back to that first Italian 
proscenium-frame theatre, and inquire what were 
the sources in Italy of the imitational setting that 
was thenceforth to take possession of all European 
theatres. 


Ci ig SE : 
Bae e ee a 


Plate 22 The imitational setting progressed in two main cur- 
rents: the first had to do with perspectives con- 
structed of make-believe architecture in relief; the 
second was the progression toward the wholly 
painted scene. The currents later joined, as we 
shall see. But taking up the perspective setting 
first, we find in these cuts from a book by Sebasti- 
ano Serlio, 1545, one of the earliest pictorial rec- 
ords of full-stage perspective scenes. He may have 
evolved them out of a misreading of Vitruvius, 
who had described such scenes as painted in minia- 
ture on the small periacti, or he may have drawn 
them more or less from current practice. Serlio di- 
rects that everything except the far end of the vista 
shall be built out in relief, but with the buildings 
becoming smaller according as they are farther up- 
stage. The drawing above is the “tragic scene,” be- 
low, the “comic scene.” On this page is a miniature 
street scene from the Venetian 1586 edition of 
Lerente: 


te “4 Ape) ne a in 


(iss 


! 


E 
E 
ESS 
E 
eS 


Plate 23 The perspective scene with the painted backcloth 
taking larger place: a setting for the opera ?Erinto 
as given in Munich in 1661 (above); and a design 
by the German Fuerttenbach, who copied the Ital- 
ian style in books he published in 1628 and 1640. 
On this page is a miniature reproduction of a set- 
ting for // Granchio, as illustrated in the published 
play, 1566. 


ih 
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Wi 
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« 


Plate 24 The perspective scene in France. From the paint- 
ing in the Museum of the Comédie Frangaise, en- 
titled “Farceurs Francois et Italiens . . . Théatre 
Royal.” 1670. There is information here, too, for 
the student of the history of stage lighting. 


Serer 


Brignetis 


Plate 25 The glorified perspective scene. To complete the 
view of the development of the perspective scene, 
it is necessary to strike ahead of our story chrono- 
logically, to show the intricate elaboration of per- 
spectives under the famous Bibienas. The upper 
picture opposite is after a design by Guiseppe 
Galli-Bibiena for a dramatic festival at the Court 
of Bavaria, 1740. The lower is a sketch which is 
attributed to Giovanni Maria Galli-Bibiena, and 
illustrates the variety afforded by running the 
vistas off at angles instead of straight ahead. There 
were at least half a dozen scene designers in the 
famous Galli-Bibiena family of Italy, and they 
begat hundreds of these designs, on and off stages; 
and straightway their imitators multiplied the 
hundreds into thousands. Meanwhile the drama 
was all but perishing, trying to find its way out 
from among the mazelike pillars and recesses, try- 
ing to keep in sight despite the blanket of ornate- 
ness. Below is another Bibiena; and a page back 
will be found a miniature of one of Servandoni’s 
adaptations of the style in France. 


a enuMniinenresae 


nn Ra ORI AN AIOE 


Plate 26 The main source of the actual painted picture scene 
lies in the spectacles and theatrical festivals that 
Italy so loved in Renaissance times. We may even 
go back to the processions and street pageantry for 
the earliest suggestion of “painty” stage decora- 
tion. In these floats for an “entry,” so beautifully 
etched by Callot, there is much that was later ab- 
sorbed into the picture setting on the proscenium 
stage. 


: Curse de Son Alresse ne 


rg CP ESE BY: le So let 


Plate 27 The percha elements bro 
dramatic production. nS setting for 
la Royne, as danced in 1581; 3 oie 7 
print. | 


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An italgie court masque of the pre 
Callot in the early seventeenth century. 


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Plate 29 The picture scene in the frame. A reéngraving by 
Huyot from Silvestre’s print (1673) of the repre- 
sentation of la Princesse d’Elide at Versailles, 


1664. Below, a scene from )Hypocondriaque, 
1628. 


5. 


pn CJournée- 
A heatre fait dans la mesme alice fir lequel lw Comédye, & le. 
de la Princesse 0'Elide 


Plate 30 The painter providing elaborate pictures and the 
machinist devising startling effects worked hand in 
hand during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- 
turies. This plate illustrates diagrammatically how 
some of the trick effects were made possible 
through elaborate stage machinery. Below is a 
miniature cut of a scene from les Noces de Thétis 
et Pélée, Paris, 1689, with figures floating on 
clouds, a harbor, ships, and other features popular 
in the period of glorified spectacle and machine- 
effects. While these elements developed more 
properly in opera and masque, they soon overran 
the stage of the spoken play. 


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Surdensers Sculp 


Plate 31 


The typical painter’s scene in England. Inigo 
Jones, having traveled in Italy, introduced the 
picture mode of scenic design into the private thea- 
tres in London. A drawing of a court masque, 
Floriméne, which he staged in 1635, after having 
passed through periods of experiment with many 
kinds of set and movable scenery, perspectives, 
landscapes, machinery, etc. It was not until after 
the Restoration, however, that picture settings 
were introduced into the public theatres in Lon- 
don. Below is the third of Serlio’s scenes, called the 
“satyric”—obviously an influence on Jones here, 
even after ninety years. 


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Plate 34. The “wing” setting grew out of the standardiza- 
tion of painted scenes. The stage picture was made 
up of a double row of parallel painted screens 
pushed in from the sides, before a painted back- 
cloth. Even in interior scenes there were no side 
walls; only successive edges of the “flats” forming 
“wings” for entrance and exit. In this screen scene 
from The School for Scandal at the Drury Lane 
Theatre, London, the window and bookshelves are 
painted on the backdrop, and there are slid-in 
wings with painted architecture instead of walls 
with doors. The typical English forestage shown 
here, with portals, is almost the sole legacy from 
the Elizabethan playhouse; the rest all grew out 
of the introduction of the Italian style. The little 
scene from a German production of 1655, below, 
indicates how the edges of the wings caught the 
light and showed up as breaks in the picture, unless 
a very master of lighting was in charge. 


Plate 35 Photographs of wing settings on a picture stage. 
The eighteenth-century Drottningholm Castle the- 
atre in Sweden was recently restored after a long 
period of disuse, and these photographs were taken 
of the old-time settings still stored there. To the 
eyes of theatregoers of to-day, trained to realism, 
the painted wings and the sky “borders” of the 
street scene seem artificial enough; but it is pos- 
sible to make out, if one looks close enough, that in 
the “cottage” setting considerable furniture is 
painted on the wings and backdrop, and that the 
latter bears a painted semblance of a raftered roof. 
Below is a drawing showing how the wings were 
constructed and attached to masts sliding in paral- 
lel grooves in the stage floor. 


Plate 36 The half-practicable, half-painted setting. An ex- 
ample of skilful codrdination of built and painted- 
in-perspective scenery, as designed by Carl Fried- 
rich Schinkel for Kathchen von Heilbronn. Typi- 
cal nineteenth-century practice of the better sort. 
Below, a typical French example, by Rubé and 
Chaperon. 


Plate 37 The effort to make the elaborate picture natural. 
Above, a decoration by Lavastre for Tribut de 
Zamora. Below, a setting for // Pirata, an opera 
produced at Milan. On this page, a fire “effect”? as 
seen from the auditorium and from back-stage. 


the later realists—but ee then that he d 
was burdened with insupportable waits for sc 
changing. Two settings at the Italian | Thea 
Paris. 


ae 
Cals 


Plate 39 The romantic landscape painter triumphant. The 
forest of Parsifal, as seen in a production at Mu- 
nich. Below is a “section” through the Paris Opera 
House, after a drawing by Karl Fichot and Henri 
Meyer, indicating the immensity of the late nine- 
teenth-century stage in relation to the auditorium, 
and showing the method of hanging scenery, the 
maze of operating balconies and devices, and the 
several floors of machinery above and below the 
stage proper. 


Plate 40 The typical late nineteenth-century painter’s set- 
ting. Above, a scene from Manon Lescaut at the 
Metropolitan Opera House, New York. Below, 
a scene from The Merchant of Venice at the 
Comédie Francaise. 


graph of a place. Setting by Adolph Linn 
Wetterleuchten, at the Dresden State Thea 


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Plate 42 Naturalism in interior scenes. Careful avoidal 
the composed picture. An effort to make th 
room seem real by showing glimpses i 


chard and The Three Sisters at the Mosco 
‘Eheatre. | aan 


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Plate 44. Setting by Lee Simonson for Molnar’s Liliom as 
produced by the New York Theatre Guild. 


The current of twentieth-century decorative prac- 
tice flows in two streams: the broader one in this 
sort of modified realistic picture setting; the nar- 
rower turning away from the depiction of actuality 
toward a stricter modernism based on a non-realis- 
tic, non-picturing stage without proscenium frame. 
This plate and those immediately following illus- 
trate the best practice within the frame, the picture 
prettily simplified, made tasteful, composed. 
There is none of the old painted perspective here, 
no elaboration of detail, no scenic display; only a 
picture made largely with plastic materials, offer- 
ing a fairly flat background for acting, lighted to 
be an aid to mood—even while remaining an illus- 
tration of some actual corner of nature somewhere. 


Plate 45 Setting by Rollo Peters for ea Moell 1 
Sand. 


an interior scene. It may i “tint : 
pare this with plates 42 and 43. 


~~ 


Plate 46 Design by Emil Orlik for The Winters Tale: 
“before the palace.” 
A sketch made for one of Max Reinhardt’s early 
productions, 1906. The design was widely repro- 
duced, and had influence on decorators in many 
countries. Below is added a thumbnail sketch by 
Ernst Stern for Swmurun, another Reinhardt pro- 
duction that influenced play-mounting outside 
Germany. 


Plate 47 Setting by Joseph Urban for the cathe 
Parsifal, as produced in Paris pe the Be 
Company. WR er fe oe 
Of a Sse suited. to © opera, t a 


the ee could peer? buts u 
simplicity need not mean bareness. 


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Plate 48 Setting by Robert Edmond Jones for Arthur Hop- 
kins’ production of The Devil’s Garden. 
In contrast to the preceding plate, a starkly simple 
scene, but composed with extraordinary fitness to 
the dramatic values involved. An accused postal 
clerk, in the isolated chair, is to be examined by in- 
spectors grouped at the desk—in a room fairly 
breathing rigidity and lack of human sympathy. 


Plate 49 Setting by Cleon Throckmorton for Eugene 

O’Neill’s The Moon of the Caribbees as produced 
by the Provincetown Playhouse. 
Not a thing that could be termed unrealistic; ‘yet 
simplified, composed, and the central space kept 
free for acting—as contrasted with the elaborate 
ships that would have been built for this play 
twenty years earlier. Just as much of the ship as 
good dramatic sense and the tiny Provincetown 
stage would permit. ; 


tieranonnons nso, 
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Sessa OF ener 


Setting at the M oscow Ant T heatre for Ande i 
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Plate 50 


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Plate 51 


Two settings by Woodman Thompson for the 
Quinteros’ Malvaloca as produced by the Actors’ 
Theatre, New York. 

The search for simplicity and economy led to the 
invention of “unit” settings, wherein certain por- 
tions of the first setting stand throughout all the 
scenes of the play. Here the arches are permanent, 
appearing with the slightest changes in both inte- 
rior and exterior scenes. 


Plate 52 Two designs by Claude aa a W 
cea production of Bae ‘S 


atmosphere. : | 


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Once ibis s genes ab The 
Three Oranges. 
The entire forestage @acusiens is. 
with changing pictures beyond the | 
half-formal, half-realistic ‘method, wi 
changing formal elements affording 
unity and continuity. — 


PESO II OPO LP OP LO LE 


examples of the new niles by an A 
designer, 1915. i 


it Bh Th Th ew 


Plate 55 Design by Fritz Erler for Faust. 
One of the early examples of German simplifica- 
tion and stylization, for a production by Georg 
Fuchs at the Munich Art Theatre. This design re- 
ceived wide publicity throughout the theatre 
world, was published in Jacques Rouché’s P?Art 
T heatral Moderne in Paris in 1910, and was copied 
into American publications among others. It was an 
early and successful demonstration of the values 
of “relief” staging, against a flat background, with 
a very few “plastic” units constituting all the 
“scenery.” By way of contrast, here is a suggestion 
of the great spaces and elaborate building ex- 
pended on the same scene by earlier designers, in a 
décor by the nineteenth-century designer Cambon. 


ale oe hae me ae 
struction conceived theatrically, th 
color p uli in the costumes. a 


é 


Plate 57 Setting by Joseph Urban for The To 


Three Kings at the Boston Opera. 
Stylization pated toa pear | Se 


setting euch many scenes, te pone 
front and the arch at the back being perm: 


Grotesques, as produced ue Ml 
Chicago. Little cate y 


ception of the play as oe 
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Plate 59 Setting by James Reynolds for The Last 
Don Juan, as produced in New York | 
ape lee and O'Neill. | 


Plate 60 Setting by Norman Wilkinson for. Gram 
Barker’s production of Twelfth Night. 


Plate 61 Sketches by Ernst Stern of Reinharde’s: revolv es 


form. | | he | 
A description and dig teee aD scenes 
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Plate 62 Two settings by A | 


the Neighborhood Playhouse, New 
The Little Clay Cart; below, The 
Illustrating the use of plastic e 
modified sky-dome for background, f 
of very different scenic requirements. | 


Plate 63 Dewees by nee Bakst for Sheher 
duced by Diaghilef’s Russian Balle 
The old painter’s method revived an 
the extreme of elaboration and. ee e 
serve the sensuous dance-drama. — = 


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tre’s producnen of Maeterlinck’s The } 
as staged by Constantin Stanislavsky. _ 
Poetic fairy-book stylization, quite | 
mental-dream mood of the play. 


Plate 66 Design by V. Egoroff showing the “lan 
memory” scene in the Moscow Art Theatre 
duction of The Blue Bird. © ae 
The picture conventionalized, made other 
and wholly charming. | est)? 


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Plate 67 Design by Gordon Craig for Hamlet. . . “lam 
thy father’e spjtit. a... 


Here the reader comes to the leader of the forces 
of revolt against realistic play-mounting. This is 
the turning point of this book between the two 
main divisions of twentieth-century staging: from 
now on there is evident a more or less complete 
abandonment of the realistic illusion, either by de- 
tailed depiction or by tasteful suggestion; the 
trend is all toward modern Expressionism, toward 
creation of a frankly theatric place for acting, to- 
ward abstraction, toward formal stages and space 
stages. Craig said, in briefest paraphrase: “Suppose 
we forget the picture, abandon depiction—why, 
we get back to the theatre.” 


Plate 68 


sar’s house.”’ 


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Plate 70 Boe by Gordon Craig for Macbeth: “bef ore 


castle.” 


Plate 71 A model by Gordon Craig showing the use 


unit screen setting on a large stage. 


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An etching by Gordon Craig of a scene ¢ 


with screens. 


Plate 72 


Plate'74. The Rock of the Valkyrs as designed by Appia. 

In 1899, when this notably sensitive rendering was 
first published, it was so revolutionary that few 
people would believe it was intended for a stage 
scene. For years Wagner’s stage direction for this 
setting had been an invitation to scenic artists to 
spread themselves with acres of painted canvas and 
elaborate papier-maché construction. Appia chose 
instead to think first of the actor in the scene. 


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Plate'75 Design by Adolphe A ppia for Parsifal ac 
1899. ef ee 


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Plate'76 Two scenes from Max Reinhardt’s produ 
Hamlet. etre es sie 
| Illustrating how much the ae 


even so early a as 1909. 


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Plate 78 Setting by Maxwell Armfield for one of Ruth St. 
Denis’ dance dramas. 
When Craig and Appia challenged realism and un- 
dermined the painted-picture setting, every sort of 
flat unobtrusive background was tried out; and 
curtains dropped behind the actors were found to 
afford a particularly useful neutral setting. Often 
the fabric in folds was considered decorative 
enough. Here one sees curtains with the slightest 


suggestion of applied design. 


Plate79 Scene from the Chicago Little Theatre P 
Play as staged by Maurice Browne and Rayn 
Jonson. 


of light. 


Plate 80 Setting by Norman Wilkinson for A Midsummer 
Night’s Dream, as produced by Granville-Barker. 
One of the prettiest modes evolved along the way 
from realistic depiction toward formalization. The 
decorator apphed his conventionalized design to 
the curtains, and then by hanging them in obvious 
folds forewarned his audience against seeking any 
sense of actuality in the scene. 


Plate 82 Two settings by Lee Simonson for As You L 
The curtain used with permanent portals to 
a formal stage, alternating with a revealed p 


stage. 


Plate 83 Setting by Raymond Jonson for Medea, as pro- 

duced by the Chicago Little Theatre under the di- 
rection of Maurice Browne. 
After curtains, screens took generous place on ex- 
perimental stages in the march toward abstraction. 
Here the “decoration” is achieved largely in the 
marshaling of the actors and by lighting. 


The Faith al as a by the 
Theatre Guild. ae 
The breaking of the Biers into ie 
screen has the same effect as the curtain’ 's 
disarming the realism-seeking ce 


Baie ‘Sack below was planned as an al 


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Plate 86 A screen designed by John Wenger. 

Intended to be an independent unit on a curtained 
stage, this screen with its decorative painting was 
designed largely as a formal element, a color spot 
in a larger abstract composition. Used with a few 
pieces of furniture it might merely dress an inte- 
rior; alone on the stage it might become a desired 
suggestion of a garden or woods scene. 


Plate 87 Setting by Lijubo Babic. fine T1 


produced at the National Theat 
A curtained stage with rounded 
various relationships as dictated by 
ments. — +" jE reas 


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Plate 88 


One cube of me adnate a8 
modeled after St S ‘interchangeable 
Scene, | 


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Plate 89 Design by Paul Nash for A Midsummer 
Dream: “the palace of Theseus.” — ee 
Architectural, but with chief reliance upon al 
rather than stylistic elements. 


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Plate 90 Design by Mordecai Gorelik for ReU aie 
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ratory. 
straction. 


Arch 


Plate gi 


Two settings utilizing geometric design. Above, a 
setting by Robert R. Sharpe for The Makropoulos 
Secret, as produced at the Pasadena Community 
Playhouse. Below, a design by Enrico Prampolini, 
for a “plastic”’ scene. 

Here there is a reversion to two-dimensional de- 
sign in an effort to bring the values of abstract Ex- 
pressionistic painting to the stage. 


Plate 92 An Expressionistic moving-picture setting. 

A group of German designers succeeded in apply- 
ing the principles (and tricks) of Expressionist 
painting appropriately to scene-making, for the 
film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari—a mode widely 
imitated on experimental stages, but usually re- 
sulting in obvious failure to make the painted 
trickery seem essentially theatrical. 


Plate 94 Design by M. Doboujins for 
Passe, a eee ot =f 
Theatre of Nikita Balieff. — 
Naive painting with a hu 
of the pretty fooling of 


_ Plate 95 Design by Natalia Cony 
The naive-primitive mode, w 


ant arty flavors? aioe 
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Plate 96 Two revivals of the simultaneous scene. Above 
design by Hermann Rosse for the New York p 
duction of Mandragola; below, a design sh 
Reigbert for an Expressionistic play b 
Kaiser. va, ey i ae 


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Plate 97 Drawing by Louis Jouvet of the architectural stage 
of the Théatre du Vieux Colombier, the play- 
house of Jacques Copeau in Paris. A permanent 
stage with a few movable units at the back. A 
naked stage that has proved more convincingly 
than any other the practicability of non-realistic, 
almost changeless play-mounting. Below is an out- 
line sketch of Copeau’s similar stage which he used 
briefly at the Garrick Theatre in New York. 


momeennenententetnimreneseereian, Nf 
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Plate 98 Settings by Jacques Copeau and Louis Jouvet for 
The Brothers Karamazov and for La Carrosse du 
Saint-Sacrement as arranged on the stage of the 
Vieux Colombier. From drawings by Robert Ed- 
mond Jones. 

The permanent stage architecture is nine-tenths of 
any “decoration” in this theatre. Below is an out- 
line cut after a model by Ladislas Medgyes for a 


formal stage. 


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Plate 99 The stage of the Marais Theatre in Brussels, as de- 

signed under the direction of René Moulaert, with 
the guiding hand of Louis Jouvet. 
A formal stage planned on the principle of one 
scene standing for all scenes, with only the slight- 
est material changes—and flexible lighting—to ac- 
complish differences of mood and suggestion. Be- 
low is a design by Alexander Bakshy for a formal 
stage. : 


Plate 100 Three drawings by Andrew Stephenson of the 

Maddermarket Theatre stage of the Norwich 
Players, Norwich, England. 
Taking the historic Elizabethan playhouse as 
model, this group of amateur actors remodeled an 
old building into a theatre with a formal stage 
wherein certain architectural elements remain fixed 
and undisguised through a wide range of produc- 
tions. Opposite, the stage is shown as it exists ar- 
chitecturally, and (below) as set with very simple 
additions for a scene in Romeo and Juliet. On this 
page is a drawing of the stage with panels set in to 
contract the playing space, and with changes in the 
inner stage, for a Restoration play. (The Romeo 
and Juliet scenes were designed by Andrew Ste- 
phenson; that for the Restoration play by O. P. 
Smyth. ) 


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Plate 101 Models by Norman-Bel Geddes of stages for The 
Mother of Christ and Lazarus Laughed. 
While the formal architectural stage is as much re- 
vival from the noblest theatres of the past as 
“modernist” invention, this type of sculptural 
stage is characteristically of the present and the fu- 
ture, a conception of the modern designer-director 
seeking more theatrical means for setting out the 
action, and made possible by the advance in light- 
ing control. Under general lighting it is, not liter- 
ally but atmospherically, one thing, and under 
localized lighting it may change to a score of dif- 
ferent things. 


Plate 102 A model by Norman-Bel Geddes of a stage for 
King Lear. 
Below is a sketch after a model by Eduard Sturm 
for Manfred. 


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ofa actors. 


Plate 105 


Faust. 
Planned for a revolving sages ¢ this s 


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Plate 106 Setting by T. C. Pillartz for Ocdipus. : 
Where the abstract screen setting and 
tured staré meets ase Cae 


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Plate 107 The formal stage in the Redoutensaal, 


) ; 


ballroom in Vienna as remodeled into a th 
by Alfred Roller under the direction | of 
Reinhardt. From a drawing ps Robert | 
Jones. : 


decoration of the room. 


LD eR RO RIIN 


Plate 108 The tripartite stage of the Decorative Arts Exposi- 
tion Theatre at Paris, 1925, designed by A. and G. 
Perret and A. Granet. 


under the direction of Teepe Jessner a 
Theatre, Berlin. From a nee by ) 
mond Jones. | a 
A shaped platform in space, with the 7 
in reality; levels to afford variety of 
the pa and skilful Tene, a 


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Plate 112 Design by Adolphe Appia for Echo a 


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A stage designed for the Dalcroze Insti 
tre; 1 98Gn 7 Sat eater 


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| Plate 113 Design by Adolphe App. a for 
rest-is silence? > a 
Living space, living one ery 
tectural elements—these now seem t« 
to set the actor out. | 


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Tairoff at the Kamerny Theatre, Moscow. 
Composition in tilted planes and upright n 
for dramatic effect. The two pictures s| 


stage. 


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structivism. 1 


1919. 


Plate 118 Constructivist setting by L. Popova for le Cocu 
Magnifique, as produced at Meyerhold’s Theatre 
in Moscow. 1922. 
The typical Constructivist arrangement of the 
“practicables” required by the action, with “deco- 
ration” rigidly suppressed. The original Construc- 
tivists avowed themselves anti-decorative; but 
they have achieved a decorativeness of their own 
sort, without reference to “styles,” without orna- 
ment, and growing directly out of structure. 


Plate 11 g) Setting by Isaac Rabiciuene ont , 
produced by the Moscow Art: Theatr 
Studio. Le Ese | 
Constructivism without the anti-decc 
sis: the skeleton shaped with decorat 
on a ye) curtaialess Bae with : 


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ran Sect ante idecoetene | 
contrasted with a carefully deco tive 
on a “space stage.” ‘a 


Chicago. An attempt to eae es 
spirit while pois the acting-struct | 
ton. | stees 
Below, a setting by B. Avonsoey 


Plate 122 Designs by Louis J ouvel Bee Knock. 
The setting as background, but conceive 


torially, as an arrangement to show yy 
ona ats ae artist in this case 


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Plate 123 Two settings by T. C. Pillartz, for L 


An appealing compromise between skel 


nand, above, and Sirocco, below. 


and highly selective realism. Distinct! 
of a space stage, but with actual places 
ably denoted in a few suggestive elen 


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Plate 12 5 Two settings as Doe Pir oe 
Marquis von Keith, as produced 
tion of Leopold J essner at the: 
lin. 
The interior scene grown very abs 
geometrical. 3 


com 


Plate 126 Design by Rane Edmond Jones ieee ; 
caneer, as prodnccgs in New sa gike Ar 7 


Kins. | ; 


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Plate 127 Two settings by Lee Simonson for T he Goat Song, 
as produced by the New York Theatre Guild. 
Like bits of reality floating in space, these scenes 
were as fully pictured as any literal mind might 
wish, yet achieved a theatrical detachment from 
nature—a clever compromise of old and new 
methods of stage decoration, and doubtless typical 
of a great deal that will be seen on fairly progres- 
sive stages during the next ten years. 


© 
* 


A 

abstraction, chapter vill; pages 
70, 80, 83, 99, 102, 103} 
plate go 

Acis and Galatea, page 28; 
plate 32 

Acis et Galatée, plate 32 

Actors’ Theatre, New York, 
page 69; plate 51 

adaptable settings, plates 71, 
88 

Albright, Victor E., plate 18 

Allen, James Turney, page 
Da plate 2 

American stage decorators, 
pages 94, 97 

Ames, Winthrop, page 94 

A Midsummer Nights Dream, 
page 58; plates 80, 89 

Amsterdam stage, 1638, page 
22; plate 20 

Anisfeld, Boris, page 50; 
‘plates 53, 93 

Antoine, pages 33, 91 

Appia, Adolphe, chapter vii; 
Pages 5, 37> 39) 435 59% 
70, 79, 83, 84, 89, 92, 
94, 99; plates 73, 74, 75, 
eo melt Dye lI2, 113, 
r255 2258, 1029 


apron stage, pages 29, 119; 


plate 34 
Arabesque, pages 115, 118, 
119 


architectural relief settings, 
pages 17, 23 

architectural settings, plate 9 

architectural stage, chapter 
xii; page 136; plate 97 


IN ID aX 


Aristotle, page 13 

Armfield, Maxwell, plate 78 

Aronson, B., pages 97, 983 
plate 121 

Ars system, page 64 

Arts and Crafts Playhouse, 
Detroit, pages 63, 86; 
plate 88 

Aspendus Roman _ Theatre, 

plate 7 


He VouslLire di, plate $2 


B 
Babic, Ljubo, plate 87 
Bakshy, Alexander, page 117; 
plate 99 
Bakst-Benois-Anisfeld, page 
94 
Bakst, Leon, pages 49, 84, 
102, 106; plates 3, 64 
Baldassare (Peruzzi), page 
27 
Balieff, Nikita, plate 94 
ballet, pages 92, 
102; plate 63 


Russian, 


Swedish, page 102 

Ballet de la Royne, page 25; 
Diater27 

Ballets Russes, page 49 

Barbaro, Daniello, page 17 

Barbey, Valdo, page 92 

Barker, Granville, pages 48, 
84, 93) 94; plates 54, 60, 
80 

Bauhaus group, Weimar, page 
102 

Belasco, David, pages 33, 65; 
plate 43 

Benois, page 50 


Bergman, Robert, page 97 

Bernstein, Aline, plates 62, 97 

Bibienas, page 25; plate 25 

Birmingham Repertory Thea- 
fre, page 93 

Blue Bird, the, page 505 
plates 65, 66, 106 

Boll, André, page 8 

Bonnard, page 92 

Bosse, plate 16 


Boston Opera Company, 
plates 47, 57 

Boston Repertory Theatre, 
page 97 

box-set interiors, pages 34, 
36, 54 

Bragaglia, Anton Giuglio, 


pages 94, 103 

Bragdon, Claude, pages 69, 
973 plate 52 

Brahm, Otto, pages 33, 89 

Braque, page 92 

British stage decorators, page 
93 

broken color, page 68 

Bronx Unser Theater, page 


Sal 
Brothers Karamazov, the, 
plate 98 


Browne, Maurice, page 953 
plates 58, 79, 83 

Browne, Van Dyke, page 4 

Bruguiere, Francis, Preface 
XX 

Buccaneer, the, plate 126 


o 
Cabinet of Dr. Caligart, the, 
pages 100, 102; plate 


92 


Cailleau, page 19; plate 13 
Callot, pages 20, 25; plates 
16, 26, 28 
Cambon, plate 55 
Campbell, Lily B., page 27 
Capeks, page 94 
Caristie, plate 6 
Cezanne, page 132 
Chaperon, plate 36 
Chauve-Souris Theatre, plate 
94 
Cherry Orchard, the, plate 42 
Chicago Little Theatre, page 
95; plates 58, 79, 83 
Chicago Opera Company, 
page 69; plate 53 
Claudel, plate 111 
Cloister, the, page 69 
Cochin, page 28; plate 32 
college theatre, page 95 
color, pages 44, 66 
broken, page 68 
mobile, pages 64, 103 
Comédie Francaise, page 43 
plates 33, 40 
Commedia dell’ Arte, pages 
20, 23, 243 plate 16 
composition, page 44 
construction, theory of, page 
E32 
constructivism, chapter xiv 
constructivist, page 127 
settings, page 107; plates 
118-121 
stage, pages 109, 111, 121 
Copeau, Jacques, pages 45, 
01, O45 st E55 82450 tO, 
129; plates 97, 98 
Coq @Or, plate 95 
Cortolanus, plate 110 
court masque settings, plates 


27-28, 31 


INDEX 


Court of the Medicis, Flor- 
ence, page 25 
theatre stage, pages 22, 23, 
25 
Craig, Gordon, 
xxii; chapter vil; pages 
37, 39) 50, 70, 83, 84, 


85, 89) 92) 93, 94) 955 
96, 100, 103, 106, 125, 


Preface, 


127, 128, 129; plates 67, 
68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 76; 
78 
Cube, G. von, plate 8 
cupola horizon, pages 62, 119 
curtain settings, pages 20, 83, 
102; plates 16, 78-82 
cyclorama, page 62 


Cymbeline, plate 81 


D 


Dalcroze Institute Theatre, 
plate 112 

dance-drama, page 49 

Danie, pages 45, 115, 119; 
plate 103 

Dante’s Divine Comedy, page 
118 

Das Rheingold, plate 104 

Decorative Arts Exposition 
Theatre, Paris, plate 108 

Denis, Maurice, page 92 

Derain, pages 92, 102 

design, pages 43, 78 

Dethomas, Maxime, pages 5, 
92 

Deutsches Theater, page 56 

Devil’s Garden, the, page 443 
plate 48 

Diaghilef, plate 63 

Doboujinski, M., plate 94 

dome, pages 62, 119; plate 
62 

Don Carlos, page 127 


Dorpfeld, plate 2 

Dr. Knock, page 138; plate 
12% 

Drésa, page 92 

Dresden State Theatre, pages 
60, 63, 89; plate 41 

Drottningholm Castle Thea- 
tre, plate 35 

Drury Lane Theatre, London, 
plate 34 

Dufy, page 102 

Duncan, Isadora, page 83 

Dunsany, Lord, plate 88 

Dybbuk, the, plate 62 


E 


Eastman Theatre, Rochester, 
plate 124 

eccyclema, page 13 

Echo and Narcissus, plate 112 

Edwards, Norman, plate 124 

effects, page 35; plate 37 

Egoroff, page 50; plates 65, 
66 

elevator stage, page 60 

Elizabethan stage, pages 21, 
83, 93, 113, 117 

Elizabethan theatre, page 21 

Ephesus Greek Theatre, plate 
4 

Erler, Fritz, page 87, plate 55 

Everyman’s Theatre, page 93 

expressionism, chapter x; 

pages 7, 109, 229,426, 

132; plates 91 ff. 


F 


Failures, the, page 1273 plate 
pt . 

Faithful, the, plate 84 

fantasy settings, page 50 

Farnese Theatre, Parma, page 
18; plate 10 

Fauconnet, G. P., plate 19 


Faust, pages 58, 65, 87; plates 
55) 105 

Ferdinand, Louis, plate 123 

Fichot, Karl, plate 39 

Fiechter, E. R., plates 3, 4 

Floriméne, plate 31 

footlights, page 67 

formal stage, pages 70, 81, 
Sow loteroG, 110, 113; 
137; plates 97-108 

theory of, page 114 

Fort, Paul, page 92 

Fortune Theatre, plate 19 

Fortuny, pages 62, 66 

Foujita, page 102 

Fouquet, page 19; plate 12 

Fouquieres, L. Becq de, pages 
8, 74. 

fourth-wall convention, page 
36 

Franziska, plate 120 

Fraser, Lovat, page 93 

French stage decorators, 
Dares G1, 92,1602 

Frickenhaus, August, page 
bz; plate,3 

Fry, Roger, page 114 

Fuchs, Georg, pages 5, 84, 87, 
89, 92; plate 55 

Fuerttenbach, page 23; plate 
23 


G 
Galli-Bibiena, 
Maria, page 24; plate 
25° 
Galli-Bibiena, 
plate 25 


Giovanna 


Guiseppe, 


Gas, plate 121 

Geddes, Norman-Bel, pages 
68, 94, 95) 97) 98) 103, 
Lae hissy she O54 P23 


plates ror, 102 


INDEX 


Geddes, Norman-Bel, stages, 
page 45 

Gemier, page 92 

Gerkan, A. von, plates 2, 5 

German stage 
pages 90-91 

Gliese, Rochus, page 90; 
plate 56 


decorators, 


Goat Song, the, page 1273 
plate 127 

Godfrey, Walter H., plate 19 

Godwin, E. W., page 73 

Golovine, page 50 

Gontcharova, Natalia, page 
102; plate 95 

Goodman Memorial Theatre, 
Chicago, page 63; plate 
T21 

Gorelik, Mordecai, pages 97, 
98; plate go 

Gétterdammerung, plate 104 

Granet, André, page 1255 
plate 108 

Greek stage, pages 11, 113; 
plates 1-5 

Grosses Schauspielhaus, Ber- 
lin, page 119 

Grotesques, plate 58 

Guilmet, plate 32 


H 


Hamlet, pages 69, 86, 106; 
Plates ie BO yenpoymed as 
120 

Hampden, Walter, plate 52 

Hamsun, plate 50 

Head, Cloyd, plate 58 

‘“Hell-mouth,” page 19; plate 
18 

Hilar, K. H., page 94; plate 
120 


Hofman, J., plate 120 


Hopkins, Arthur, pages 128, 
138; plates 48, 116, 126 

Horace, page 15 

Hotel de Bourgogne, Paris, 
page 20; plate 21 

Howard, Sidney, plate 77 

Hugo, Jean, page 102 

Hume, Sam, pages 86, 95, 973 
plate 88 

Huyot, plate 29 


if 


Il Granchio, plate 23 

Il Pirata, plate 37 
Immermann, pages 68, 73, 89 
impressionism, pages 39, 65 


interior, box-set, pages 34, 36, 


54 

In the Claws of Life, plate 
50 

Isaacs, Edith J. R., Preface 
XX1 


Italian stage decorators, pages 


94, 103 
Theatre, Paris, plate 38 


i 

Jackson, Barry V., page 93 

Jakouloff, page 133 

Jehanne @Arc, pages 115, 
EId5 LEO 

Jessner, Leopold, pages 44, 
Gl t20s meas lAOs 
plates 109, 125 

Jessner-treppen, page 126 

Jewish Habima Theatre, Mos- 
cow, page 136 

Jones, Frederick, page 97 

Jones, Inigo, pages 17, 28; 
plates 9, 31 

Jones, Robert Edmond, pages 
7) 445 68, 94, 955 975 983 
plates 47, 54) 59) 775 98) 


rO7, 1.09, LING, 126) 420, 
£29,138 
Jonson, Raymond, pages 8, 
953 plates 58, 79, 83, 97 
Jouvet, Louis, Preface xxi; 
pages 91, 93, 975 98, 995 
116, 922,133 


Julius Caesar, plate 68 


K 
Kainer, Ludwig, page 91 
Kaiser, Georg, plates 96, 121 
Kamerny Theatre, Moscow, 
pages 114, 128, 136 
Kathchen von Heilbronn, 
plate 36 
Kiesler, Frederick, pages 105, 
110; 133 
King Lear, plate 102 
Koster, Albert, plate 12 


Krehan, Herman, page 91 


L 


la Boutique Fantasque, page 
102 

la Carosse du Saint-Sacre- 
ment, plate 98 

la Folie de Clidamant, plate 
21 

Lanckoronski, plate 7 

la Princesse d’Elide, plate 29 

Larionoff, page 102 

Last Night of Don Juan, the, 
plate 59 

Laurencin, page 92 

Lavastre, plate 37 

Lazarus Laughed, plate t1o1 

le Cocu Magnifique, plate 
118 

Leger, page 102 

le Regiment qui Passe, plate 
94 


TNE os 


PErinto, plate 23 

les Noces de Thétis et Pélée, 
plate 30 

PHypocondriaque, plate 29 

lighting, chapter vi; pages 
42, 64, 79, 123 

Liliom, plate 44 

Linnebach, Adolphe, pages 
89, 94; plate 41 

Little Clay Cart, the, plate 62 

little theatres, pages 95, 97 

Los Angeles Little Theatre, 
page 95 

Love of the Three Kings, the, 
plate 57 

Love of the Three Oranges, 
the, page 69; plate 53 

Lozowick, Louis, plate 121 

Lugné-Poé, pages gt, 92 

Lysistrata, page 1323; plate 
11g 


M 
Macbeth, pages 


plates 56, 69, 70, 116 


7S, tes 


Macdermott, Norman, page 
93 

Macgowan, Kenneth, pages 
100, 1253; plate 59 

Maddermarket Theatre, Nor- 
wich, pages 115, 1173 
plate 100 

Maeterlinck, pages 50, 128; 
plates 65, 117 

Mahelot, plate 21 

Makropoulos Secret, the, page 
1013 plate g1 

Malvaloca, page 69; plate 51 

Mandragola, plate 96 

Manfred, page 119; plate 
102 


Manon Lescaut, plate 40 


Mansion stage, page 19 

Man Who Married a Dumb 
Wife, the, plate 54 

Marais Theatre, Brussels, 
pages 115, 116; plate 9g 

Margoline, S., page 135 

Marinetti, page 94 

Marquis von Keith, plate 125 

Marriage of Figaro, the, plate 
ted 

Masefield, John, plate 84 

Masse-Mensch, page 124 

Matisse, pages 92, 102 

mechanics, chapter vi 

Medea, plate 83 

Medgyes, Ladislas, page 117; 
plate 98 

mediaeval religious stage, 
plates 11-13 

mediaeval wagon-stage, plate 
14 

Meistersinger stage, plate 12 

Merchant of Venice, the, page 
56; plate 40 

Metropolitan Opera House, 
New York, page 25; 
plate 40 

Meyer, Henri, plate 39 

Meyerhold, Vesvolod, pages 
91, 92, °94;~ EOgweaeuay 
126; 129, 39, 0 

Mielziner, Jo, page 97; plate 
105 

Miracle, the, page 119 

Miracle plays, page 19} plate 
14 

mobile color, pages 64, 103 

modern stage decoration, 
plates 44-127 

Moeller, Phillip, plate 45 

Molnar, plate 44 


mood, page 41 


Moon of the Carribbees, the, 


plate 49 

Moscow Art Theatre, pages 
50, 86, 94, 105, 136; 
plates 42, 50, 65, 66, 
119 

Mother of Christ, the, pages 
Ae, 145, 1183) plate 101 

Moulaert, René, pages 94, 
116; plate 99 

Moussinac, Léon, page 92 

movement, pages 76, 107, 
a4, 128 

moving scenery, pages 105, 
Mop wtas ss piate: 119 

multiple settings, pages 69, 85 

multiple stage, plates 12, 21 

Munich Art ‘Theatre, page 
87; plate 55 

Mystery plays, page 19 

Mystery stage, page 20; plate 


12 


N 
naive settings, page 102 
Nash, Paul, page 93; plate 


89 
National Theatre, Prague, 
plate 87 


naturalism, chapter 111; page 
30; plates 41-43 

Neighborhood Playhouse, 

pages 63, 1383 plate 62 

Nemirovitch-Danchenko, page 

105 

New York Theatre Guild, 
plates 445 84, 115, 127 


O 
Oberammergau Passion Play 
stage, page 19 
Oenslager, Donald, pages 97; 


98; plate 104 
Oedipus, plate 106 


INDEX 


Olbrich, J. M., plate 10 
Olympic Theatre, Vicenza, 
page 16; plate 9 
O'Neill, Eugene, plates 49, 59 
opera, Boston Company, plates 
47) 57 
Chicago Company, page 
69; plate 53 
House, Paris, page 55 
Metropolitan, New York, 
page 25; plate 40 
Opéra, Paris, page 4; plate 39 
Orange Roman Theatre, plate 
6 
origin of localized settings, 
page 26 
painted settings, page 25 
picture settings, page 22 
stage decoration, page 11 
Orlik, Emil, pages 48, 90; 
plate 46 
Oropus Greek Theatre, plate 
3 
Othello, plate 109 
Ott, Paul, page 91 


P 


pageant cars, page 25 

painted settings, pages 13, 22, 
25 ff., 100; plates 26 ff., 
63-64, 93-95 

Palladian Theatre, Vicenza, 
page 16; plate 9 

Paris Opera House, page 555 
plate 39 

Parsifal, page 30; plates 39, 
47,75 

Pasadena Community Play- 
house, pages 97, 1013 
plate 91 

Pemberton, Brock, plate 77 

periacti, pages 13, 15) 17) 235 
plates 8, 22 


Perret, Auguste, page 1213 
plate 108 
Perret, Gustave, page 1283 
plate 108 
perspective settings, plates 22- 
25 
Stage, page 23 
Peters, Rollo, pages 68, 95, 
975 plate 45 
Phédre, page 128; plate 114 
Picasso, pages 92, 102 
Pichel, Irving, page 97 
picture setting, pages 22, 70; 
plates 26 ff. 
Pillartz lite Cer beeen cons 
Diates 1 ao,0n24 
Pirchan, Emil, pages 44, 91, 
126, 1383 plates 109, 
p25 
plastic, pages 44, 80 
stage, page 113 
settings, page 44; plates 55, 
62 
platform stage, plate 16 
Platt, Livingston, pages 95, 
oF 
playhouse, Arts and Crafts, 
Detroit, pages 63, 86; 
plate 88 
Neighborhood, New York, 
pages 63, 138; plate 62 
Pasedena Community, pages 


g7, 101; plate gt 


Provincetown, page 633 
plate 49 
Poel, William, pages 93, 945 
Lay 


pointillisme, page 67 

Pompadour, Mme. de, page 
28 

Pompey’s ‘Theatre, 


Rome, 


plate 8 


Popova, L., page 133; plate 
118 

portals, page 68; plates 53, 
57, 82 

Prague National ‘Theatre, 
plate 120 

Prampolini, Enrico, pages 94, 
104, 110, 135; plate 91 

Preludes, plate 93 

presentational theory of pro- 
duction, pages 77, 109 

Priene Greek Theatre, plates 
ay 5 

processionals, page 25 

production, presentational 
theory of, pages 77, 109 

projected settings, page 64 

proscenium frame, pages 18, 
53 

Provincetown Playhouse, New 
York, page 63; plate 49 


Q 


Quintero, plate 51 


R 


Rabinowitch, Isaac, page 
1323) plate 119 

Rackham, page 50 

Raimund ‘Theatre, Vienna, 
plate 120 

realism, page 37; plates 37- 
43 

realistic settings, chapter iv; 
pages 33, 70, 96 

Rederijker stage, Antwerp, 
page 22; plate 20 

Ghent, page 22; plate 20 

Redoutensaal theatre, page 
120; plate 107 

regisseur, pages 8, 42, 75 

Reigbert, Otto, page 91; plate 
96 


ENDS 


Reinhardt, Max, pages 48, 55, 
56, 58, 84, 89, 90, 92, 
939 943-955 TESy 119; 
126; plates 46, 61, 76, 
107, 124 

relief stage, pages 84, 87, 
106; plate 55 

Renaissance stage, page 16; 
plates 9, 10 

Return of Peter Grimm, the, 
plate 43 

revolving stage, pages 55, 60, 
61, 105 

Reynolds, James, page 97; 
plate 59 

Ricciardi, Achille, page 103 

Ricketts, Charles, page 93 

Roerich, page 50 

Roller, Alfred, page 91; plate 
107 

Roman stage, pages 14, 113; 
plates 6-8 

Romeo and Juliet, plate too 

Roméo et Juliette, page 102 

Rosse, Hermann, pages 97, 
98; 1245: plates®1 45286, 
96 

Rouché, Jacques, pages 5, 48, 
925 plate 55 

Rubé, plate 36 

R. U. R., plate 90 

Russian Ballet, pages 92, 102; 
plate 63 

stage decorators, pages 93, 

94 

Rutherston, Albert, pages 48, 
93> 95; plate 81 


S 
Sabbioneta, theatre at, page 
17 
Sachs, Hans, page 20; plate 
16 


St. Denis, Ruth, plate 78 

Saint-Saéns, Camille, plate 6 

Salle des Machines, page 4 

Sand, Mme., plate 45 

Savits, pages 73, 89 

Scamozzi, page 17 

scene, simultaneous, stage of, 
page 121; plate 21 

scenery, Moving, pages 105, 
13%, 195 

projected, page 64 

scenes, street, plate 22 

Schinkel, Carl Friedrich, page 
89; plate 36 

Schlegel, page 73 

School for Scandal, the, page 
29; plate 34 

Schumacher, Fritz, page go 

Schwartz, Maurice, plate 121 

screen settings, pages 84, 127; 
plates 83-88 

screen systems, plates 71, 72; 
plate 88 

sculptural stage, pages 115, 
118; plate ror 

Serlio, Sebastiano, page 23; 
plates 22, 31 

Servandoni, plate 25 


settings, adaptable, plates 71, 


88 
architectural relief, pages 
17, 23; plate g 
constructivist, page 107; 
plates 118-121 
court masque, plates 27-28, 
31 
curtain, pages 20, 83, 1023 
plates 16, 78-82 
fantasy, page 50 
localized, page 26 
moving, page 119 
multiple, pages 69, 85 
naive, page 102 


oP}. eee 


settings, painted, pages 13, 
2 di.) 100% ‘plates 
26 ff., 63, 64, 93-95 
perspective, plates 22-25 
picture, page 70; plates 
26 ff. 
plastic, pages 44, 62; plate 
55 
projected, page 64 
realistic, chapter iv; pages 
33, 70, 96 
eoreen,,) pages) 84, 1273 
plates 83-88 
skeleton, page 68; plate 57 
street, page 23 
symbolic, page 51 
unit, plates 51-53, 71 
wing, page 28; plates 34, 
35 
Seven Princesses, the, page 
128; plate 116 
Shakespeare, pages 21, 56 
Shakespearian stage, plate 17 
Sharpe, Robert R., page 973 
Plates 14, 91, 101 
Sheherazade, page 50; plate 
63 
Sievert, Ludwig, page go 
Silvestre, plate 29 
Simonson, Lee, pages 6, 64, 
68, 95,97) 985 127, 1385 
plates 44, 82, 84, 115, 
127 
simplicity, page 78 
simplification, page 41; plates 
44-52 
simultaneous scene, plate 96 
stage of, page 13 
Sirocco, plate 123 
skeleton settings, page 68; 
Slates 57 
Smyth, O. P., plate 100 
Soirées de Paris, page 102 


INDEX 


Sophocles, page 13 
space stage, chapter xi1l, pages 
Ogio. 00, Fid,i tons 
plates 109-117 
stage, Amsterdam, 1638, page 
22; plate 20 
apron, pages 29, 119; plate 
34 
architectural, chapter x11; 
page 136; plate 97 
Commedia dell? Arte, plate 
16 
constructivist, pages 109, 
erg beeb Goa 
comet theatre, pages 22523, 
25 
decoration, definition of, 
page 3 
history of, chapter ii 
modern, plates 44, 127 
origin of, page 11 
theory of, pages 5 ff. 
decorators, American, pages 
945° 97 
British, page 93 
French, pages 91, 92, 
102 
German, pages 90, 91 
Italian, pages 94, 103 
Russian, pages 93-94 
elevator, page 60 
Elizabethan, pages 21, 83, 
Oso V TZ S27 
formal, pages 70, 81, 99, 
Hopi Makever. whsnherea ete y 
1373 plates 97-108 
theory of, page 114 


Greek, pages 11, 1133 
plates 1-5 
machinery, chapter vi; 


pages 13-15, 26, 1143 
plates 8, 30, 39 


stage, Maddermarket, Nor- 

wich, page 117 

Mansion, page 19 

mediaeval religious, plates 
11-13 
wagon, plate 14 

Meistersinger, page 12 

multiple, plates 12, 21 

Mystery, page 20; plate 12 

Norman-Bel Geddes, page 
45 

Oberammergau Passion 
Play, page 19 

perspective, page 23 

plastic, page 113 

platform, plate 16 

proscenium frame, page 53 

Rederijker, Antwerp, page 
223 plate 20 
Ghent, page 22; plate 20 

relief, pages 84, 87, 106; 
plate 55 

Renaissance, page 16; plates 
9, 10 

revolving, pages 55, 60, 
613; plate 105 

Roman, pages 14, 1133 
plates 6-8 

sculptural, pages 115, 1183 
plate rot 

Shakespearian, plate 17 

simultaneous scene, pages 
16, 121; plates/ng5, 2% 

space, chapter xili; pages 
89, 99, 101, 109, 110, 
121; plates 109-117 

Terence, page 20; plate 15 

tri-partite, page 1213 plate 
108 

Valenciennes Passion, page 
19; plate 13 


wagon, pages 20, 59 


Stanislavsky, Constantin, 
pages 50, 92, 94, 1053 
plate 65 

Starke, Ottomar, page gt 

State Theatre, Berlin, page 
126; plates 109, 125 

Stephenson, Andrew, Preface 
xxii; plate 100 

Steps, the, page 128 

Stern, Ernst, pages 48, 55, 58, 
61, 90; plate 46 

street setting, page 23; plate 
22 

Streit, A., plates 8, 10 

Strnad, Oskar, page gt 

Strohbach, Hans, page 91 

Strom, Knut, page go; plate 
56 

Sturm, Eduard, page 119; 
plate 102 

stylization, chapter v; plates 
54-60 

suggestion, pages 43, 78, 114 

Sullivan, Louis, page 132 

Sumurun, pages 87, 94; plate 
46 

sur-réalism, page 102 

Swan Theatre, plate 17 

Swedish Ballet, page 102 © 

Swords, plate 77 

symbolic settings, page 51 

symbolists, page 91 


synthesis, page 42 


a 


Tabarin, page 20; plate 16 
Tairoff, Alexander, pages 94, 

128, 133, 136; plate 114 
tennis court theatre, page 20 
Tenth Commandment, the, 


plate 121 
Tents of the Arabs, the, plate 
88 


INDEX 


Terence stage, page 20; plate 
15 
Termessus Roman ‘Theatre, 
plate 7 
Thamar, page 50 
Theater Deutsches, page 56 
Theatre, Actors’, New York, 
page 69; plate 51 
Arts Monthly, Preface xxi 
Aspendus Roman, plate 7 
Birmingham Repertory, 
page 93 
Boston Repertory, page 97 
Bronx Unser, page 97 
Chauve-Souris, plate 94 
Chicago Little, pape 94; 
plates 58, 79, 83 
college, page 95 
Comédie Francaise, Paris, 
plates 33, 40 
Dalcroze Institute, page 
Li2 
@ Art, page gt 
Decorative Arts Exposi- 
tion, Paris, plate 108 
de ?Oeuvre, page 91 
des Arts, Paris, pages 48, 
g2 
Dionysus, Athens, page 123 
plates 2, 3 
Dresden State, pages 60, 63, 
89; plate 41 


Drottningholm Castle, 
plate 35 

Drury Lane, London, plate 
34 


du Vieux Colombier, Paris, 
pages 45, 115; plates 97, 
98 

Eastman, Rochester, plate 
124 

Elizabethan, page 21 


theatre, Ephesus Greek, plate 
4 
Everyman’s, page 93 
Farnese, Parma, page 18; 
plate 10 
Fortune, plate 19 
Goodman Memorial, Chi- 
cago, page 63; plate 121 
Guild, New York, pages 
64, 69, 127, 1383 plate 
127 
Italian, Paris, plate 38 
Jewish Habima, Moscow, 
page 136 
Kamerny, Moscow, pages 
TL4A, 128s se 
Libre, page 91 
little, pages 95, 97 
Maddermarket, Norwich, 
pages 115, 1173 plate 
100 
Marais, Brussels, pages 
115, 116; plate 99 
Mme. de Pompadour, page 
a2 
Moscow Art, pages 50, 86, 
94, LOS) LEG ar a65 
plates 42, 50, 65, 66, 87 
Munich Art, plate 55 
National, Prague, plate 87 
Olympic, Vicenza, page 
16; plate 9 
Orange Roman, plate 6 
Oropus Greek, plate 3 
Palladian, Vicenza, page 
16; plate 9 
Pompey’s, Rome, plate 8 
Prague National, plate 120 
Priene, Greek, plates 2, 5 
Raimund, Vienna, plate 120 
Redoutensaal, page 120 
Sabbioneta, page 17 


Pe ty ee ee ee 


Pye ts Sy eee 


a a et pt ial 


SS ae 


oii 
iw he 


Brie. 2 


theatre, State, Berlin, page 
1263 platés 109, 125 

Swan, plate 17 
tennis court, page 20 
Termessus, Roman, plate 7 
theories of, page 9 
Toy, Boston, page 95 
Ventadour (Italian), plate 


39 

Volksbiihne, Berlin, page 
63 

Yiddish Art, New York, 
plate 121 


theatric form, pages 77, 99, 
106 
theory of stage decoration, 
pages 5 fl. 
of the theatre, page 9 
of construction, page 132 
of the formal stage, page 
114 
Thompson, Woodman, page 
975 plate 51 
Three Sisters, the, plate 42 
Throckmorton, Cleon, page 
975 plate 49 
Tidings Brought to Mary, 
the, page 125; plate 111 
Tieck, page 89 


PIN DoS 


Toy Theatre, Boston, page 
95 

Tree, Beerbohm, page 93 

Tribut de Zamora, plate 37 

tri-partite stage, page 121; 
plate 108 

Twelfth Night, page 116; 
plates 60, 87 


U 


unit settings, plates 51-53, 71 

unity, pages 41, 74, 78, 79 

Urban, Joseph, pages 67, 68, 
94, 95, 97; plates 47, 
b7 


Vv 


Valenciennes Passion Play 
stage, page 19; plate 13 

Valkyrs, the, plates 73, 74 

Vasari, page 27 

Ventadour (Italian) Theatre, 
plate 33 

Viele, Sheldon K., pages 69, 


97 
Viollet-le-Duc, plate 11 
Vitruvius, pages 15, 17, 22, 
235 plate’22 
Volksbiihne, Berlin, pages 63, 


124 


W 


Wagener, pages 73, 80; plates 
74) 104 

wagon stage, pages 20, 59 

Walser, Karl, page gt 

Washington Square Players, 
New York, page 95 

Wedekind, plates 120, 125 

Weerth, Ernest de, page 97 

Wenger, John, page 97; plate 
86 

W etterleuchten, plate 41 

Wijdeveld, H. T., page 94 

Wilfred, Thomas, pages 64, 
103 

Wilkinson, Norman, pages 48, 
84, 93, 953 Plates 60, 80 

wing settings, page 28; plates 
34) 35 

Winter’s Tale, the, plate 46 

Witt, Johann de, plate 17 


¢ 
Viddish Art Theatre, New 
York, plate 121 


ZL 
Zuckermandel, Ludwig, plate 


110 


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